' f.* **,* K ■ • 5 1 e i» »'i »'t 
! » a i i'5 « t,i« J «.j 1 f I i, t 

■11 * » t I i 1 E t i • . « . S-.'. 3 






,5 f « i'l' J- b" 



^mmm^ 



^^>m<^< 



mrn^ 



' ' » I • ! .% 



I'M.'.'.' 






;:;;::;:::;:;:;:;:;;:;:;:::;%:;:::;:::; 



f i S ft I I 1 ■ a o*-*,'-«.* « i 



iiiiliiiii* 



:!:y:v:v:' 



>:':>':.'.•.%■ 







>,!,.tH.|T,'if,%> 



•yMvI'ViMi: 



.'.'.'I*." « « »- 




aass_^^,ffe^ 



,/^ 



Book_ 



i/r/C^i/66 



WITH THE COMPLIMENTS 

OF THE 

NEW YORK MONUMENTS COMMISSION 



MAJOR-GENERAL 
JAMES S.WADSWORTH 

AT 

GETTYSBURG 

AND OTHER FIELDS 



D. 



of D. 
.'. I91« 




GEN. JAMES S. WADSWORTH, U. S. VOLS. 



ITn flibemoriam 



James Samuel XXHabswortb 



1807*1864 



IL ':^ 73 5-7 



publlsbeO bg autboritg ot tbe State of Vizw Uocfs, IllnOcr tbe Superrtalon ot 
Tlew yorft. /ETonumentd Commlaaion p^ rtx Cr^^Mi^^^-'^-'^ 



•a- ^'tU'<Zy<f A^ , (sl^TCc~^-~y~y^ 



*^ 



ALBANY 

J. B. LYON COMPANY, PRINTERS 

19J6 



2)ebicatioti of /Iftonument 



jetecte& bB tbc State of flew l?oth 

in Commemoration of tbe 

Servicce of 



Brevet fTDajot*(3enetal 
James Samuel Mabswortb 

in. S. ID. 



an& tbe "Wcw IDorft (Troops unber bis commanb 

on tbc Battlefield of (Betti^sburfi 

3uli5 I, 2 anb 3 

1863 



New York Monuments Commission 

FOR THE BATTLEFIELDS OF 

GETTYSBURG, CHATTANOOGA AND ANTIETAM 



Neav York, March 29, 191.). 

To the Legislature: 

I have the honor to transmit herewith report of the dedication of 
the monument erected on the battlefield of Gettysbuig to Brevet 
Major-General James Samuel Wadsworth, U. S. V. 

Respectfully yours, 

LEWIS R. STEGMAN, 

Chairman. 



Znblc of Contents 



Page 

Introductory — Report of Monuments Commission - - - - 1 1 

Copy of Tablet ------..-. jj 

Order of the Day — Military Parade - - 23 

Program of Exercises -----.... gj 

Prayer— Rev. Wm. T. Pray --..... gg 

Introductory Remarks — Col. Lewis R. Stegman - - . . 34 

Oration — Capt. Albert M. Mills ----... 43 

Address — Gen. Horatio C. King ----... 57 

Remarks by ,Maj. James W. Wads worth 64 

Remarks by Hon. James W. AV^adsworth, Jr. - 

Poem by J. I. C. Clarke ------... 

Resnarks by Hon. John F. Murtaugh ---... 70 

Remarks by Hon. Thaddeus C. Sweet ------ 73 

Benediction — Rev. Oscar L. Severson ---... 75 

Life of General James Samuel Wads worth 79 



66 
67 



IFllusttations 



PAGE 



Portrait of Genera] James S. Wadswortli ----- Frontispiece 

Inscriptions on Bronze Drum ---... Facinc 11 

The Wadswortli Monument - - - - . . . . ] j, 

New York ^lonuments Commission - - - - . . - '21 

Speakers at the Dedication -------- 34 

Major James W. Wadswortli ------... .j,(; 

James W. Wadsworth, Jr., U. S. Senator --.... 50 

Official Party at Dedication -------.. 04, 

Home of General Wadsworth --.-.... -5 

Henry House, First Bull Run -----... go 

Chancellorsville, Location of Trenches, First Corps - . . . gO 

Chambersburg Road, Gettysburg ------.. §8 

Map of Gettysburg, First Day -------- gg 

Lutheran Seminarj', Gettysburg -------- 92 

Railroad Cut and McPherson's Wood, Gettysburg - - - - - 100 

Culp's Hill, Gettysburg - - - - - - - - - 1I'2 

Ravine in the Wilderness - - -- - - - - -11 il 




voiuini 

OrWICADIHK 






IRICADIER. CINERAL O.S.V. AUGUST J3. AND FROM AUGUST II 1861 TO 
MARCH H.H6MN COMMAND OF A BRIGADE OF NEW YORK RtClMlNTSIU 
ftDOVtin omSION. ARMY OF THE POTOM AC ,^ 

MIIITARY COVtRNOK Of DISTRICT OF C01.UMBlA:"MAR.ir TO WV. B.IW 

COMMAHDtD HRST DIVISION, FIRST CORPS. FROM DECEMBIR JJTOKJI^ 



DIVISION, FIRST CORK. MARCH 9 TO MARCH 2J; MARCH Z5 TO MAY H MAY27 

TOJULTB.ISej 

ABICNED. OCTOBER 9. TO SPECIAL DUTY-INSPECTION 0' COIORIDTI>OOB- 
TO DICIMBER 19. H63. DETAILED JANUARY 9. 1864. ON COURT OF INQW" 

ORDERED MARCH IS. I8e4. TO REPORT TO GEN. MEADE." 'N CO'**'*^tW 



'OUKDtD MAY S. 1864, IN THE BATTLE OF THE WILDERNESS. VIRGIHlft 
ntO MAY S 1864 

-,„. /''«>l>ITtD BREVET MAJOR CEN ER AL U. S.V -TO \* ^ K F ROM K M ^ «^^ 
^"K CAUANT CONDUCT AT THE BATTLES OF GETTYSBURG AND THE >"V3 



INSCRIPTIONS ON BRONZE DRUM OF WADSWORTH MONUMENT 



Hn fIDemoviam 

James Samuel Mabsvvortb 



■flntrobuctoi'i? 

UNDER date of IMarch 2, 1910, the New York INIonuments 
Commission made application to the Legislature for an appro- 
priation for the pm-jjose of erecting on the battlefield of 
Gettysburg, Pa., a bronze statue to Brevet Major-General James 
Sanmel Wadsworth, deceased, to commemorate his services and the 
services of the troops under his command in the engagement. 

General Wadsworth and the regiments that fought under him 
rendered memorable service to the Army of the Potomac in the battle 
of Gettysburg. The two brigades constituting the division which he 
commanded were the first infantry troops to encounter the Con- 
federate forces on that field. Upon the arrival on the scene of General 
Wadsworth's Division — the First Division of the First Corps — 
General Buford's Cavalry were engaged in a preliminary skirmish 
with the advance columns of the Army of Northern Virginia and 
desperately striving to hold them in check until such time as infantry 
troops came to their relief; and that relief was brought to them by 
Cutler's and IVIeredith's Brigades, which marched to Seminary Ridge 
on the morning of July 1, 1863, under the command of General Wads- 
worth. The conflict which thus began has earned, in a sense, for 
General Wadsworth the honor of opening the battle of Gettysburg. 
Reaching the field considerably in advance of the other two divisions 
of the First Corps, his brigades were obliged to sustain the brunt 
of the fighting at the outset. In this initial contest of the engagement, 
which forms a distinct episode in the struggles of the first day's fight 
at Gettysburg, the brigades opposed to him were repulsed, many 
hundreds being made prisoners. In the gallant resistance which they 

11 



3ames Samuel Mabswortb 

offered to vastly superior numbers, after the renewal of the battle on 
the afternoon of the first day, the regiments of the First Division dis- 
played almost unexampled feats of valor and determination; they 
inflicted heavy losses on the enemy, and their own casualties through- 
out the first day amounted to more than one-half the number that the 
division carried to the field in the morning. It was General AVads- 
worth, also, who was assigned to the important work of occupying 
Gulp's Hill on the evening of the first day, and on the second day and 
the third day of the battle he rendered timely aid to the Twelfth 
Corps in their famous defense of that place. From the commence- 
ment of the Civil War until mortally wounded in the battle of the 
Wilderness on the 6th of May, 1864, General Wadsworth was con- 
tinuously engaged in rendering valuable, varied and valorous service 
to the cause of safeguarding the Union. 

In the estimates for the supply bill of 1910 which this Commis- 
sion submitted to the Legislature an item was included for covering 
the cost of the proposed statue to General Wadsworth ; and by chapter 
513 of the Laws of 1910, which became a law June 18, 1910, the New 
York ISIonuments Conmiission was " authorized and directed to pro- 
cure and erect on an ajipropriate site on the battlefield of Gettysburg, 
in the State of Pennsylvania, a bronze statue to Brevet Major-General 
James Samuel Wadsworth, deceased, at an expense not to exceed the 
sum of Ten thousand dollars." 

The monument erected by the State of New York, under the 
supervision of this Board of Commissioners, by the provisions of the 
above-mentioned act, commemorates the services of General Wads- 
worth and of the New York troops under his command, comprising 
the Seventy-sixth, Eighty-fourth (Fourteenth Brooklyn Militia), 
Ninety-fourth, Ninety-fifth, One hundred and second and One hun- 
dred and forty-seventh regiments of infantry, and Battery L, First 
New York Light Artillery. 

Sketches of the volunteer organizations given in a publication 
entitled " New York in the War of the Rebellion " show that these 
regiments were recruited in various counties in the State of New York. 



3amcs Samuel iWIla&swortb 

Authority having been secured from the State to proceed with the 
work of erecting the monument, a careful study was made by the 
Commission of an apjiropriate site for it. It was obvious at the outset 
that this place should be on Seminary Ridge, as that was the scene of 
General Wadworth's best known exploit as a commander. In their 
deliberations for this purpose the Conmiissioners had recourse to Gen- 
eral Wadsworth's report of the battle, contained in Serial No. 43 of 
the Rebellion Records; also a publication called " Maine at Gettys- 
bui'g," which describes the movements of Hall's Battery that went 
into action on ground adjacent to the positions occupied l)y the regi- 
ments of Cutler's Brigade, General Wadsworth's Division, the morn- 
ing of the first day's battle. Remarks made by some of the officers of 
the One hundred and forty-seventh New York Volunteers at the 
dedication of the memorial to their regiment, which are printed in 
" New York at Gettysburg," were also found useful in this connec- 
tion. The facts gathered from these, as well as other sources, were 
laid before the Gettysburg National Park Commission for their con- 
sideration, and the site contemplated for the monument was formally 
approved by them. Accordingly, at a meeting of the New York 
Monuments Commission held December 8, 1911, a resolution was 
adopted, to the effect that the site for the proposed monument to 
General Wadsworth shall be on the east side of Reynolds Avenue, 
close to the Western Maryland Railroad cut, and north of and 
adjacent to, the memorial erected to the One hundred and forty- 
seventh New York Volunteer Infantry, Cutler's Brigade. The 
boundaries of the plot embracing this site were laid out in due course 
by A. J. Zabriskie, the engineer of this Commission; and a map of 
the site and its immediate environments was prepared and forwarded 
to the Gettysburg National Park Commission for their approval of 
the site and that of the Secretary of War, which was duh^ given, as 
shown by map signed by him, dated February 9, 191.5. This map is 
now on file at the office of the Secretary of State of New York. 

The New York Monuments Commission had in mind for the 
monument a standing figure in bronze, in military costume, placed 

13 



3ame0 Samuel TIUla&9Wortb 

upon a granite pedestal, upon which should appear suitable inscrip- 
tions, the State Coat of Arms and the P^irst Corps badge. Pursuant 
to a resolution of the Board, letters were written to R. Hinton Perry, 
sculptor, of New York, and Louis R. Gudebrod, sculptor, of IVIeriden, 
Conn., inviting them to submit preliminary sketch models, showing 
their designs for the statue. The designs were intended to serve as a 
basis for the full-size plaster model desired. The sketch model pre- 
pared by Mr. Perry was selected by the Commissioners. jNIr. Perry's 
work was also the choice of Major James W. Wadsworth, the son of 
General Wadsworth. Thereupon a contract, which is dated January 
19, 1912, was executed between this Commission and Mr. Perry. By 
the terms of the contract the sculptor agreed to furnish a full-sized 
plaster model, nine feet high, for portrait statue, and plinth for same, 
and a full-size model for bronze inscription drum, four feet in diameter 
and three feet high, with decorations in relief. As work on the full- 
size model progressed, members of the Commission, accompanied by 
Major Wadsworth, conferred from time to time with the sculptor 
at his studio, in regard to the military effects which it was desired to 
secure, requirements as to uniform and accoutrements, and other like 
details. Acceptance by the Commission of the full-size plaster model 
took place on April 21, 1913, the date when it was finally inspected. 

Draft of the inscription to be placed on the pedestal of the monu- 
ment, which had been prepared by the Commission, favored with the 
advice of Major Wadsworth, was sent to the AVar Department at 
Washington, D. C, on April 17, 1913, for examination and approval, 
and for the approval of the Gettysburg National Park Commission. 
Some slight changes in the text of the inscription having been made 
by the authorities in the War Department, it was adopted by the 
Commission in its amended form. 

Proposals which had been invited for reproducing the plaster 
model in bronze were read by the chairman at a meeting of the Board 
held Aug. 21, 1913; and the contract therefor was awarded to the 
Gorham Company, of New York. This contract is dated September 
16, 1913. The Chairman of the Commission and Colonel Beckwith 

14 








THE WADSWORTH STATUE FACING WEST 

Covering the Union line of battle July 1, 1863 



3amc0 Samuel lKIla^0wo^tb 

inspected the completed bronze figure at the works of the manufac- 
turers, at Providence, R. I., on April 29, 1914, and formally accepted 
same on behalf of the Commission. 

Bids that various granite contractors were asked to submit for 
furnishing the pedestal required for the statue were considered by the 
Commissioners at their meeting held February 19, 1914. The pro- 
posal of the National Granite Co., of Montpelier, Vt., contained the 
lowest figures for constructing this pedestal and the contract for it 
was given to them. This contract is dated May 19, 1914. The work 
of finally completing the pedestal was done under the supervision of 
Commissioner Beckwith, and the acceptance of same by the Com- 
mission was made, through him, on July 3, 1914. The pedestal is 
twelve feet square at the base and ten feet two inches high above the 
foundation. It consists of six courses. The stone, which is highly 
polished, is dark Barre granite. 

The design for the pedestal was the woi'k of Edward P. Casey, 
architect of New York. Mr. Casey is the grandson of General Silas 
Casey, U. S. A., who served in the Army of the Potomac during the 
Civil War. 

Through Commissioner Beckwith, contract' bearing date of May 
7, 1914, was made with Charles E. Lady, of Gettysburg, Pa., for the 
construction of the foundation, and with Charles Kappes, also of 
Gettysburg, for the setting of the pedestal. 

The work of setting the pedestal, superintended by Conmiissioner 
Beckwith, was completed on August 3, 1914, and the following day 
the bronze statue was put in place by the Gorham Company. 

The total cost of the monument was $7,788.28; amount appro- 
priated, $10,000. This left an unexpended balance of $2,211.72 in 
the hands of the State Treasurer. 

Nearly all the important parts of the work required for the monu- 
ment having been arranged for and the completion of same assured 
by the Autunm of 1914, the Chairman of the Commission at a meeting 
held November 7, 1918, submitted a statement showing the estimated 
cost for appropriately dedicating the statue; and thereupon he was 

15 



3ame6 Samuel Mabswortb 

authorized by his colleagues to make application to the Legislature 
for an aj^propriation deemed sufficient for this purpose. This item, 
amounting to $7,200, was included in the supjjly bill of 1914; it was 
approved by the Governor June 10, 1914, and is part of chapter 531, 
Laws of 1914. Provision was thus made for transportation to and 
from Gettysljurg, Pa.; of tv/o hundred and twenty of the surviving 
veterans of the Xew York commands represented in the battle of 
Gettysburg, on the first, second and third days of July, 1863, under 
tlie command of General Wadsworth, to be designated by the respec- 
tive veteran organizations, upon an ajiportionment fixed by the Com- 
mission, to attend the dedication of the statue, to be erected by the 
State on the battlefield; for the transportation of the Governor and 
Military Secretary, the Lieutenant-Governor, the Comjitroller, the 
family of General Wadswortli, the Speaker of the Assembly, the 
President pro tem of the Senate and the members of the two Pinance 
Committees of the Legislature and this Board of Commissioners and 
invited guests ; and other incidental expenses. 

The plan and scope of the ceremonies for this dedication and the 
requirements and work incident to it occupied the Board at a meeting 
held June 24, 1914. Tuesday, October 6, 1914, was designated as the 
date for the ceremonies. A resolution was adopted, that CaiJtain 
Albert M. Mills, Eighth New York Cavalry, a veteran of the battle, 
be communicated with and requested to deliver the oration for the 
occasion, and General Horatio C. King, also, to speak. General 
John A. Reynolds, Battery L, First New York Light Artillery, with 
whom correspondence on the subject was had, was appointed grand 
marshal for the ceremonies. At this meeting of the Conmiission, also, 
arrangements were outlined for providing division and brigade flags 
and streamers, as well as the veteran and guest badges which were to 
be worn for the occasion. 

In addition to the regiments already named, as serving under the 
command of General Wadsworth in the engagement, and therefore 
entitled by the provisions of the act to free transportation, this priv- 
ilege was likewise extended to members of the One hundred and fourth 

16 



3amc5 Samuel Mat)0wortb 

New York Vclunteer Infantry, inasmuch as that regiment, also 
called the Wadsworth Guards, was largely recruited at Geneseo, 
N. Y., under the auspices of General Wadsworth. 

Two circulars, the first dated July 17, 1914, and the second August 
19, 1914, were mailed to the executive officers of the organizations 
entitled to particijjate in the dedication, notifying them of the passage 
of the act, the date set for the ceremonies, the transportation arrange- 
ments that had been made with the various railroads, and other par- 
ticulars relating to the dedication. With the first circular there were 
enclosed muster roll blanks, for the officers to enter thereon the names 
of the veterans whom they desired to designate for taking part in the 
ceremonies. 

A communication was addressed to the Trunk Line Association, 
under date of July 17, 1914, asking them to make arrangements with 
the railroad companies, whereby transportation orders issued by this 
Commission to veterans for the occasion of the dedication could be 
exchanged for tickets from points in the State of New York to Gettys- 
burg and return. This request was duly complied with. 

For sending invitations to the members of the official dedication 
party a specially printed form of letter was used, accompanied by 
papers containing the itinerary and the programme of exercises. 

Transportation for the official dedication party was furnished by 
the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, on a special train which left 
New York at 9.56 a. m., Monday, October 5th. At Gettysburg the 
party was accommodated at the Eagle Hotel. 

The muster rolls containing the names of the veterans who were to 
participate in the ceremonies at the dedication began to arrive by 
September first, and as they reached the office of the Commission the 
transportation certificates were made out from them. ^\niere there 
was doubt as to the most convenient routing the matter was taken up 
with the officers of the organizations, or else with the veterans them- 
selves direct. The transportation certificates were forwarded on Sep- 
tember 21st, and with them were sent the badges which were to be 
worn by the survivors at the ceremonies. Individual applications for 

17 



3amee Samuel Ma&swortb 

transportation continued to reach the Commission until the end of 
September, three weeks after some of the muster rolls had been 
received, and these were promptlj'^ passed upon by the Conmiission 
direct. The last order issued was dated October 1st. 

Only a few of the or«ranizations were able to complete their quota 
of representation. Age and the distance to be travelled were the 
apparent reasons for this. Also, declination in a good many cases 
was due to the fact that nearly all the veterans invited for this occasion 
had been at Gettysburg a short time previously, — during the fiftieth 
anniversary celebration, in July, 1913. 

Transportation over the battlefield, and to and from the statue, 
was furnished to the veterans and the official dedication party. 

There were 214 transportation orders issued to veterans, of which 
forty were returned unused. With their respective itemized accounts 
for transportation furnished, the several railroad companies forwarded 
to this office the orders which were exchanged for tickets, and these 
vouchers were compared with the corresponding stubs in the order 
books. A summary of the statements shows that seven railroads 
issued for these orders, from thirty-four stations, 174 tickets. One 
whole ticket and six portions of tickets were returned unused by their 
respective holders and the redemption values of same were deducted 
from the bills of the railroads issuing them. 

Pursuant to a request sent by the Chairman of the Commission 
to the War Department, under date of July 10, 1914, in behalf of 
the State, there were present and took part in the ceremonies, for 
escort duty, two troops and band from the Fifth Ignited States 
Cavalry, Captain W. W. Forsyth, commanding. The War Depart- 
ment not being able to send a battery of artillery with the cavahy, 
as desired, the Commission secured the services of a provisional bat- 
tery from York, Pa. (commanded by Captain W. C. Kraber), for the 
purpose of firing the salutes. 

Tuesday, October 6, 1914, was a real Indian summer day. At 
two o'clock the different veteran organizations (led by the grand 
marshal and his aides), the United States Cavalry and the official 

18 



3ames Samuel TKIla^9wo^tb 

dedication party, started from the locations in the town that had been 
assigned to them and proceeded along the Springs Road to the monu- 
ment. On the arrival of the procession at the monument salutes were 
fired by the Battery, and again at the unveiling of the statue. About 
2,000 people - — fully 350 of them from the State of New York — 
witnessed the brilliant spectacle presented at the dedicatorj'^ exercises. 
The Cavalry Band and the Citizens Band of Gettysburg furnished 
the music. The chairman of the Commission, Col. Lewis R. Stegman 
presided at the exercises. Prayer having been offered by the Rev. 
William T. Pray, 102nd N. Y. Vol. Inf., the statue was unveiled, 
with acclamations, by Master Jeremiah Wadsworth and his sister 
Miss Evelin Wadsworth, great-grandchildren of (ieneral Wadsworth. 
The speakers for the occasion were Captain Albert M, Mills, 8th 
N. Y. Cav., General Horatio C. King, Sheridan's Cavalry, Senator 
John F. jMurtaugh, of Elmira, X. Y., President pro tem of the 
Senate; Hon. Thaddeus C. Sweet, of Phoenix, N. Y., Speaker of 
the Assembly, Major James W. Wadsworth, son of General \Vads- 
worth, Hon. James W. Wadsworth, Jr., Ignited States Senator- 
elect, the grandson of General Wadsworth. A poem, specially 
written for the occasion, entitled " The Battle Years," was read 
by J. I. C. Clarke. 

A noteworthy feature of this event was the fact that three genera- 
tions of General Wadsworth's family took part in it. 

The Star and Sentinel, a Gettysburg newspaper, in its issue of 
October 7, 1914, the day after the dedication, reported that " the 
services were among the most impressive and touching that ever 
marked an unveiling of the kind on this field." 

As already stated, the amount appropriated for dedicating the 
statue to General Wadsworth was $7,200; there was disbursed for 
it bj' the Commission the sum of $.5,939.21, leaving an unexpended 
balance in the State Treasury of $1,200.79. 



19 




k:2%^/^>^^^''2S> g^^^^^^^-^^^'''^ 




Co/. Cim^ S^CAiv/ r// ^ ^ ^"- ^'^^^ ^^^ CM/^^ 



NEW YORK MONUMENTS COMMISSION 1914 



Commissioners ; 
Col. CLINTON BECKWITH 
Col. LEWIS R. STEGMAN 
Gen. HORATIO C. KING 
Brlg.-Gcn. HENRY D. HAMILTON. 
The Adjutant-General 



Col. LEWIS R. .STEGMAN, 
Chairman 

J. W. LYNCH. 

.Secretary 



New York Monuments Commission 



FOR THE 



Battlefields of Gettysburg, Chattanooga and 

Antietam 

ROOM 1015, 116 NA.SSAU STREET, NEW YORK 



July 17, 1914. 

Ma&swortb riDonument DeMcation 

Circular No. 1 

This Board of Commissioners is authorized bj- chapter 531 of the 
Laws of 1914 to fm-nish free transportation to Gettysburg, Pa., 
and return, for thirty-four survivors from each of the six New York 
regiments, and Battery L, First N. Y. L. A., which served under 
Gen. James S. Wadsworth in the battle of Gettysburg, July 1, 2 
and 3, 1863, to attend the dedication of the bronze statue erected 
there by the State to the memory of General Wadsworth. 

The dedicatory exercises will be held Tuesday, Octoljcr 6, 1914. 

Muster roll blanks will be furnished the officers of the veteran 
associations, for them to enter thereon the names of such of their 
members as they desire to designate for taking part in this dedication. 

Transportation orders, filled out by the undersigned from the 
muster rolls, will be forwarded to the oflicers of the associations, for 
distribution among the veterans in whose favor they are drawn. 

31 



3amc0 Samuel Mabewortb 

Those transportation orders will not be accepted for passage 
on trains, but must be exchanged for railroad tickets; neither are 
the orders transferable; if not used they should be returned to the 
New York Monuments Commission. 

The officers are requested to send in the muster rolls so that they 
will be received in this office not later than September 10, lOli, in 
order that there may be ample time to transmit the certificates, and 
also to notify the railroad companies of the stations for which trans- 
portation orders have been issued. 

Apijlication has been made to the railroad companies, through 
the Trunk Line Association, to honor tickets on this occasion any 
day from October 1 st to October 4th, inclusive. 

The dedication ceremonies will take place at the site of the monu- 
ment, which is on the easterly side of Reynolds Avenue, north of 
the Western Maryland Railroad cut. 

It is requested that veterans attending this dedication will, as 
far as practicable, appear in the uniform usuallj' worn on Memorial 
Day. 

Badges specially gotten up for this function will be forwarded 
for distribution to the officers in charge of the muster rolls, at the 
same time that the transportation certificates are sent out. 

Flags and streamers suitable for the occasion will be furnished 
the organizations at Gettysburg. 

On the day of the dedication carriages will be furnished by the 
Commission for convejnng the veterans from Gettyburg Square to 
the site of the monument, and they will also be given a free ride 
around the battlefield. 

It is expected that a good many Civil War veterans, other than 
those entitled to free transportation, will travel to Gettysburg for 
this event, and a cordial invitation is extended to them to be present 
at the exercises. 

Benches will be furnished in front of the platform to seat the 
veterans and those accompanying them during the dedicatory exer- 
cises. 

33 



3ame0 Samuel Mat)swortb 

The War Department will order a squadron of cavalry and a 
band to proceed to Gettysburg for duty at the ceremonies. 

The following are the principal hotels of Gettysburg: Eagle 
Hotel, $2.00 and upwards; Gettysburg Hotel, $2.00 and upwards; 
Wabash Hotel, $1.50; City Hotel, $1.50; Pitzer's Hotel, $1.50. 
Private houses, from $1.00 to $1.50. 

Fraternally, 

LEWIS R. STEGMAN, 

Chairman, 

HEADQUARTERS OF GRAND MARSHAL. 

Eagle Hotel, Gettysburg, Pa. 

October 5, 1914. 

Having been duly appointed Grand Marshal by the New York 
Monmnents Commission for the Battlefields of Gettysburg, Chat- 
tanooga and Antietam, on the occasion of the dedication of the 
monument to Brevet Maj or-General James Sanmel Wadsworth. 
on Seminary Ridge, October 6, 1914, I hereby assume command. 

The following staff appointments are announced : 

Col. W. H. M. Sistare, Adjutant General. 
Aides : 

James Wliitlock, Fourteenth Brooklyn. 

John J. Titus, Ninety-fifth New York Volunteers. 

Homer D. Call, Seventy-sixth New York Volunteers. 

Llewellyn J. Hall, One hundred and forty-seventh New York 
Volunteers. 

Sanmel C. De Marse, Ninety-fourth New York Volunteers. 
Henry M. Maguire, One hundred and second New York Volun- 
teers. 

H. D. Mack, One hundred and fourth New York Volunteers. 
Wm. H. Shelton, Battery L, First New York Light Artillery. 
They will be obeyed and respected accordingly. 

23 



3amc0 Samuel IaIla^9wortb 

Tlie hour for assembly for the parade will be One and a half p. m. 

The carriages and wagons carrying the official part\- and the 
veterans to the dedication ceremonies at the monument will forni 
as follows: 

1. Grand Marshal and Staff. Orator of the Day. 

•2. Detail from the ,5th U. S. Cavalry. Capt. ^V. W. Forsyth. 
Commanding, and Band. 

3. Official Party, New York Monuments Conunission. and in- 
vited Guests. 

4. Citizens Band of Gettysburg. 

5. Veteran Division, namely : 

Fourteenth Brooklyn (Eighty-fourth Xew York Volunteers), 
Wm. L. Drain. Commanding. 

Seventy-sixth New York ^"olunteers, George W. Steele, Com- 
manding. 

Ninety-fifth New York Volunteers, Wm. Benson, Conunanding. 

One hundred and forty-seventh New York Volunteers. Clark 
H. Norton, Commanding. 

Ninety-fourth New York Volunteers, Chas. W. Sloat. Command- 
ing. 

One hundred and second New York Volunteers, Reuben D. 
Quick, Conunanding. 

One hundred and fourth New York Volunteers, Harry Clark, 
Conunanding. 

Battery L. First New York Light xVrtillery, Geo. W. Breck, 
Conunanding. 

^'eterans of Ci. A. K., Thomas J. McConekey, Commanding. 

New York Battery of Artillery. 

The officers named will take command of their respective regi- 
ments to facilitate such movements as are recjuired. 

The U. S. Cavalry will i'ovm on the south side of Washington 
Street, with the right resting on Chaml>ersburg Street. 

The official party will form on Chambersburg Street, with its 
right resting on Washington Street. 

34 



3ame0 Samuel Ma&0wortb 

The Veterans will form on York Street, with right resting on 
Gettysburg Square. 

As there will l)e no marching on foot, it is expected that every 
veteran, and particularly in the parade, will he prepared to start 
promptly on time. 

The line of movement will he westward by the Spring Road, to 
the position of the Monument. 

Regiments and batteries will follow each other from the places 
assigned them, as indicated in the preceding paragraph, commencing 
with the " Fourteenth Rrooklyn." Division, brigade flags and regi- 
mental and battery pennants for each organization will be furnished 
to distinguish the sections for embarkation. 

At the monument, during the ceremonies, the veterans are re- 
quested to keep the Hags well disijlaycd. 

A special guard from the IT. S. Cavalry will keep the speakers' 
stand entirely free until the arrival of the olHcial party. 

Seats in front of the stand will be provided for veterans and 
friends. 

At the conclusion of the exercises, the veterans and official party 
will be returned to Gettysburg in the same conveyances that carried 
them to the monument. 

JOHN A. REYNOLDS, 

Grand Marshal. 
Official: 

W. H. M. SiSTARE, 

Colonel and Adjutant-General. 



8S 



Commissioners : 
Col. CLINTON BECKWITH 
Col. LEWIS R. STEGMAN 
Gen. HORATIO C. KING 
Brig.-Gcn. HENRY D. HAMILTON, 
The Adjutant-General 



Col. LEWI.S R. STEGMAN, 
Chairman 

J. W. LYNCH. 
Secretary 



New York Monuments Commission 



FOR THE 



Battlefields of Gettysburg, Chattanooga and 

Antietam 

ROOM 1015, 116 NASSAU STREET, NEW YORK 



ITINERARY OF OFFICIAL PARTY AT DEDICATION OF STATUE 
OF GENERAL JAMES S. WADSWORTH 

Gettysburg, Pa., October 5, 6 and 7, 1914. 

The invited guests of the State of New York, in charge of the 
New York IVIonuments Commission for the Battlefields of Gettys- 
burg, Chattanooga and Antietam, will embark on a special train 
from the Pennsylvania Railroad Depot, 32nd Street and 7th Avenue. 
Monday morning, October 5, 1914. The train will leave the station 
at 9 :56 a. m. promptly. Arrive Baltimore, 2 :10 p. m. Arrive Gettys- 
burg, 4:4.5 p. M. 

Guests are requested to arrive early so that they may be com- 
fortably seated in the parlor cars before the train starts. 

All grips and valises not desired to be held by the guests will be 
taken by porters to the baggage car. Tags of identification should 
be on each article. The number of the rooms at the Eagle Hotel, 
Gettysburg, will be found upon tags supplied by the Commission, 
thus enabling the hotel porters to make prompt delivery at the rooms. 

27 



3amc0 Samuel Ma^0wo^tb 

With so large a party to handle, it is requested that guests will be a 
little patient on arrival. 

The train will deliver the official part}^ one block from the hotel. 

Lunch will be served on the train from 1 1 a. m. to 2 p. m. Dinner 
will be served at the hotel from 6 p. m. to 8 p. m. 



©ctobcr 6f 1914 

Breakfast, 7 a. m. 

Wagons will be in front of the hotel at 8 a. m., to convey the 
official party over a portion of the battle ground. The party will 
start promptly at 8:30 a. m., proceeding to Gulp's Hill by East 
Confederate Avenue, line of Confederate attack upon Slocum's 
Twelfth Corps, right wing of the Union Army, where a brief halt 
will be made; thence past Cemetery Hill, where the "Louisiana 
Tigers " charged ; through the National Cemetery, on to Taneytown 
Road, by General JMeade's headquarters, to the Angle, the scene of 
Pickett's famous charge, and Hancock's line. Another brief halt 
for description. Along Hancock Avenue to the Little Round Top, 
the left of the L^nion Army Line. From this point every part of the 
battlefield can be seen. Brief halt and description. Through the 
Devil's Den, the Wheatfield, the Loop, to the Peach Orchard — the 
lines of the 3rd and parts of the 2nd, 'Ah and Oth Corps, Sickels' 
defensive position the second day. Then to the hotel for dinner. 

The wagons for conveyance of the official party to the dedication 
exercises will be prepared to join the column of march, following 
the U. S. Cavalry and Band, at 1:30 p. ji. sharj}. In moving over 
Seminary Ridge, the procession will pass the point where General 
Reynolds was killed in the first day's fight, and a part of the cavalry 
and infantry lines of the first day. At the conclusion of the dedicatory 
exercises, the official party will proceed north, covering the scene of 
the fierce engagement of the first day — the First and Eleventh Corps 
fronts. 

38 



3ame0 Samuel Mabswortb 
©ctober 7, 1914 

Those of the guests who desire to visit the scene of the great 
cavalry fight at Bonaughville will be furnished with wagons for 
this purpose. The convej^ances used on October 6th will be at their 
disposal. Only the time limit should be kept in mind. Dinner will 
be served at 11.30 a .m. The train for Xew York will start promptly 
at 1 P. M., arriving there about 9 o'clock. 

Throughout the railroad trip, General King will be in charge of 
Car A, Colonel Stegman, Car B, General Hamilton, Car C, and 
Colonel Beckwith, Car D. 

©ffidal BeNcatlon parti? 

Major James W. Wadsworth and Mrs. Wadsworth; Hon. James 
W. Wadsworth, Jr., U. S. Senator, Master Jeremiah Wadsworth 
and Miss Evelin Wadsworth; Hon. John F. Murtaugh, President 
pro tern of the Senate; Senator Thomas H. CuUen; Hon. Thaddeus 

C. Sweet, Speaker of the Assembly, and Mrs. Sweet; Hon. Heber E. 
^^Hieeler, member of the Assembly, and JMrs. Wheeler ; Hon. Harold 
J. Hinman, member of the Assembly, and Mrs. Hinman; Hon. Wm. 
J. Maier, member of the Assembly, and INIrs. Maier; Hon. Homer 

D. Call, Treasurer of the State of New York, and Mrs. Call ; Gen. 
John A. Reynolds; Col. Henry W. Knight; Col. Selden C. Clo- 
bridge; Col. Thos. McConekey; Col. Samuel S. C. Pierce; Col. W. 
H. M. Sistare; Major Wm. H. Barker; Capt. Chas. S. Barker; 
Major H. M. Maguire; Capt. Albert M. Mills; Capt. Cortlandt St. 
John and Mrs. St. John; Capt. Geo. H. Thomas; Rev. Wm. T. Pray 
and Mrs. Pray; Dr. Chas. J. Lundgren; Dr. J. V. Sweeney; Mr. 
John C. Birdseye, Secretary, State Civil Service Commission, and 
Mrs. Birdseye; IVIrs. G. L. Brown; INIr. J. I. C. Clarke and IVIrs. 
Clarke; Mrs. Percy R. Gray; Mrs. John Hanway; Mr. James A. 
Lavery, State Civil Service Commissioner, and Mrs. Lavery; "Sir. 
Fred N. Lewis and Mrs. Lewis; Mrs. C. K. Litchfield; jVIr. Joseph 

39 



3ames Samuel Mat)swortb 

F. Ludlum; Mr. Frank E. ISIunson; INIr. Jacob Neu, State Civil 
Service Commissioner, and INIrs. Neu; ISIrs. S. S. Norton; jNIr. Chas. 
W. Ridgway; INIr. Harold N. Saxton, Chief Examiner, State Civil 
Service Commission, and IMrs. Saxton; ISIr. James A. Wendell, 
Deputy Comptroller, and ]\Irs. Wendell; Dr. INIeyer Wolff, State 
Civil Service Conmiissioner, and Mrs. Wolff. 

Col. Lewis R. Stegman and Mrs. Stegman; Col. Clinton Beck- 
with; Gen. Horatio C. King and ]\Irs. King. 

Accompanying The Adjutant General, Brig. Gen. Henry D. 
Hamilton, were: Col. Adolph L. Kline; Col. John H. Foote; Major 
Alexander Barnie; Capt. Frank N. Harris; Capt. Chas. E. Fiske 
and Lt. W. A. Niver. 



30 



Qtbcv of Exercises 

at 
General TftIlat)0\vortb flDonumcnt, 

Seminars IRt&Ge, (Bettssburg, 

©CtObet 6, 19H, 2:30 p. /IB. 



1. Music, Citizens Band of Gettysburg. 

2. Prayer, by Rev. Wm. T. Pray, 102nd New York Veteran 
Volunteers. 

3. Introductory Remarks by Chairman of Board of Commis- 
sioners, Colonel Lewis R. Stegman. 

4. Music, U. S. Cavalry Band. 

5. Unveiling of the INIonument, bj' Master Jeremiah Wadsworth 
and INIiss Evelin Wadsworth, Great-grandchildren of General Wads- 
worth. 

6. Major-General's Salute, York Battery of Artillery. 

7. Oration, Captain Albert INI. JNIills, Eighth Xew York Cavalry, 
Gamble's Brigade, Buford's Cavalry. 

8. Music, Citizens Band of Gettysburg. 

9. Address, General Horatio C. King, Sheridan's Cavalry 
Corps. 

10. Music, U. S. Cavalry Band. 

11. Remarks by Major James W. Wadsworth, General Wads- 
worth's Son, and President National Soldiers' Home, and Hon. 
James W. Wadsworth, Jr., Grandson of General Wadsworth. 

12. Music, Citizens Band of Gettysburg. 

13. Poem, by J. I. C. Clarke. 

14. Music, U. S. Cavalry Band, " Star Spangled Banner." 

15. Remarks, by Hon. John F. Murtaugh and Hon. Thaddeus 
C. Sweet. 

16. Benediction, Rev. Oscar L. Severson, One hundred and thirty- 
seventh New York Volunteers. 

31 



Unvocation L"»\: Cbc 1Rcvcrcn^ lUm. C. prat 
l02^ «. L'. Vols. 



OIvORD. we acknowledge Thee, the ahuighty and Everlasting 
CtihI. to whom we bring praise and adoration, as we appear 
in thy presence at this time 

^Vc thank Thee, our Heavenly Father, that in the march of life 
we tinil it lifting to here call a halt — that we may in some reverent 
anil tangible way inilicate our memory and esteem for one whose 
valor for his native land knl him to tiffer himself as a sacritice on 
the field of battle, in defense of his country's Hag. 

Thou. O Loril. didst vouchsafe him the honor to fall as heroes 
fall. We are here to dedicate this monmnent to his memory; and 
with sad pleasure we recall his deeils of usefulness and high distinc- 
tion. 

We praise Thee for the spirit of conn-adeship that binds us to- 
gether, as we are engaged in the ceremonies of the occasion; and we 
pleatl that the sacred ties of true soldiership may abide with us 
forever. 

We thank Thee, that while the ranks ot' the veteran marchers 
are fast thinning out. that so many are enabletl \o rally to give testi- 
mony of their affection for their brave and illustrious commander, 
whose constant zeal and fearless courage characterized him as a faith- 
t'ul frientl as well as a chieftain whose name will never be forgotten. 

AVe impli>re thy blessing upon tlie kindred of the valiant leader, 
who are honored by his name anil the tender association of family 
ties, and the historic interests connected with the affairs of the Empire 
State and of the Nation. 

We pray Thee to continue thy blessing upon our fair Country. 
\Ve praise Thee for Thy goodness to om- commonwealth — for the 
fraternal spirit within our borders — for the peace and prosperity, 
for which we give unto Thee thanks and glory. 



3amc9 Samuel Mabswortb 

Grant thy blessings upon tlie Chief Magistrate of our land. Re- 
member hinj in his manifold and trying exjieriences in his high posi- 
tion. Grant him wisdom, patience and courage. 

Hear us, O Lord, for the countries engaged in war. Grant, () 
God, a speedy adjustment. May peace and good will reign through- 
out the world. 

Fulfill, our Heavenly Father, the desires and petitions we bring 
to Thee, as may be most expedient for us; granting us, in this world, 
knowledge of thy truth, and in the world to come, life everlasting. 
All of which we ask in the name of the Father and of the Son and 
of the Holy Ghost. Amen. 



39 



H^^l•cc15 t>V! ^loloncl lewis TR. Stcoman, 

Cbatrinaii, IHcw L'ork Monuments Cominisaion 



Ladies axd Gextlemex. Comrades of the Army of the Potomac, 

AND COMK^VDES OF AlL THE AkMIES P RESENT : 

I BID \ ou a most hearty welcome here to-day on this great and 
memorable occasion. It is, indeed, gratifying- to behold, and 
it is inspiring to contemplate such a splendid spectacle as this. 
^^Iiatever eifort there was required for organizing this magnifi- 
cent demonstration of respect to the memory of a tlistinguished 
soldier and the troops that fought under him on this battlefield, aye. 
on the very spot where we are now assembled and arenas of battle 
contiguous to it. is amply rewarded by the results that have been 
attained. AVe have just seen unveiled a noble statue, erected tt) the 
memory of a noble soldier, in civil life a prominent personage in the 
Empire State of New York, and in the battle of Gettysburg, one 
of the most remarkable commanders who made that famous struggle 
a landmark in the history of this nation; and on the other hand we 
have here to witness and participate in the ceremonies for dedicating 
this statue a concourse of many hundred people from the State of 
Xew York, including many of its leading citizens, and including also 
three generations tif the family of James Samuel AVailsworth. 

And, Conu'ades of the Army of the Potomac, you who belong 
to the renowned regiments that served imder General Wadsworth 
mi this field — a great many of you close to the exact spot where 
you are now seated beneath his statue — it is yoiu* presence here 
to-day, coming as you have from so many different places in the 
State of Xew York, that lends special significance to this brilliant 
and dignified function. "\Muit visions of the past the unveiling and 

34 




SPEAKERS AT THE DEDICATION 



3amc9 Samuel mnabswortb 

dedication of the statue of General Wadsworth must bring to your 
nimds! It is verily an inspiiing sight, and fully in consonance with 
memories of what was enacted on this historic ground, a little more 
than one and fifty years ago, to see you here as the representatives 
of the regiments that fought and endured and conquered, under the 
command of General Wadsworth, on this battlefield. By coming 
here in such numbers, in spite of the difficulties of distance and the 
weight of years that nmst now press on many of you, you have given 
proof, if proof were necessary, of the respect in which you hold the 
memory of your old and honored comniander. You were his comrades 
in arms in the battle of Gettysburg and to-day you are co-partners 
of the tribute that is being paid to his memory ; for this monument, 
as well as helping to emi)hasize and perpetuate tlie fame of General 
Wadswortli's valor and achievements at Gettysburg, commemorates 
no less the valor and achievements of the troops that served under 
him — your valor and what you did here. 

This statue, this noble statue as I can well call it, and which 
I am proud to say is one of the finest monuments of its kind standing 
anywhere within the boundaries of the battlefield, is a well-deserved 
tribute. There was no nobler — no better — example of the American 
soldier — of the volunteer soldier — than James Sanmel Wadsworth. 
From the commencement of the Civil War — from the time when 
the l)attle of Manassas was fought — until mortally wounded in the 
battle of the Wilderness the 6th day of May, 1864, General Wads- 
worth devoted his life as a volunteer soldier actively, fearlessly and 
zealously, to the end that the integrity of this nation might l)e pre- 
served, to the end that it should continue to remain one nation 
instead of two, as it was sought to make it. 

General Wadsworth distinguished himself in many a hard-fought 
battle in the Civil War, all through the great struggle until he lost 
his life in the campaign of the Wilderness; but it is by what he and 
the brave men who served with him accomplished and endured on 
this very place where we now have the privilege and the honor of 
dedicating his statue, that his claims to great service — far reaching 



35 



3amc0 Samuel TRIla^0wortb 

in its results — were pre-eminently established. It is here that his 
great qualities as a commander, suddenly called on as he was to 
execute a difficult and hazardous part, were principally proven. 

The battle of Gettysburg, as nmch as any battle ever fought can 
be called so, was a series of battles, fought in succession during three 
memorable days; and it is practicallj' here on Seminary Ridge that 
the first stand was made against the invasion of the Army of Northern 
Virginia. It is meet that General Wadsworth's statue should stand 
on the spot selected for it, for it is close by that the first infantry shot 
was fired by one of the regiments that belonged to the division of 
the First Corps that he connnanded. 

Let us revert for a moment to that momentous morning of July 
1, 1863, and rehearse in brief what was taking place at that time on 
Seminary Ridge and all around here. A great conflict was then 
impending, which was destined to be included among the decisive 
battles recorded in history. A small portion of the mighty forces 
soon to encounter each other in deadly strife had already come upon 
the scene; and from every direction the units of which they were 
composed were headed for Gettysburg, marching along the several 
thoroughfares that converge there, in regiments, brigades and 
divisions. 

The brigades of Gamble and Devin, of the Union Army, consti- 
tuting General Buford's Cavalry Division, having discovered the night 
before the first of July the position of General A. P. Hill's Division 
of the Confederate Army, had formed into line close by Willoughby 
Rim. to the right and left of Chambersburg Pike and extending to 
the IMummasburg Road. As early as 5.30 the following morning 
scouts sent forward from Buford's Division to reconnoitre the move- 
ments of the enemy, reported that General A. P. Hill's Division was 
approaching Gettysburg from the direction of Cashtown, which is 
about seven miles to the northwest of Gettysburg. The Confederates 
continued to come nearer and nearer and General Buford's Cavalry 
marched forward to resist them and if possible hold them back. The 
cavalry fought with such valor and determination at this juncture in 

36 



3ames Samuel Ma^ewortb 

endeavorino- to keep the troops opposed to tlieni at bay that the 
Confederate coniiiiaiider. General Heth, was led to believe that his 
brigades were fighting infantry troops in addition to the cavalry. But 
there were no infantry regiments on the scene just then. They 
were not far off, however, for the division commanded by General 
Wadsworth, who was destined to lead the first infantry troops of 
the Union Army that reached the battlefield, was marching from 
Marsh Creek, where his brigades had bivouacked the preceding 
night. 

The fight became very serious on the part of Buford's Cavalry. 
A little more, and the Confederates would have driven them back 
to Gettysburg. Fortunately for them, after the fight had lasted for 
upwards of an hour, General Reynolds, who commanded the First 
Corps, reached Gettysburg, and after conferring with General Buford 
they both rode out to Seminary Ridge. Having made a brief survey 
of the ground that the cavalry was striving to hold and observing the 
plight that Gamble's Brigade was in — hard pressed and anxiously 
waiting for infantry assistance — General Reynolds rode back in 
haste to his corps to hurry them forward. 

Meeting General Wadsworth in a short time (his brigades were 
then marching along the Emmitsburg Road) the two Generals held 
a brief consultation, and forthwith General Wadsworth was ordered 
to lead his men to Seminary Ridge and relieve the cavalry which was 
then on the point of being routed from there. Leaving the Emmits- 
burg Road, at the Codori House, which is about three-quarters of a 
mile southwest of the town, General Wadsworth marched his troops 
across the fields to the sound of cannon, for the preliminary skirmish 
in which the cavalry was engaged was now developing into a real 
battle. 

Undoubtedly at this critical time General Buford's Cavalry, and 
especially Gamble's Brigade, for they had to bear the brunt of the 
attack, had done heroic work. INIore intent on keeping the enemy 
in check than otherwise until such time as infantry aid reached them 
they fought bravely against overpowering numbers. But the infantry 

37 



James Samuel UOabswortb 

troops they were eagerly expecting came to their relief none too soon. 
Gettysburg and the vantage points of battle in its vicinity were 
seriously threatened. 

" Give praise to others early come or late " for valor and achieve- 
ment on the battlefield of Gettysburg, but it will always be remem- 
bered of General Wadsworth that it was he who commanded the 
infantry regiments that were first to arrive on the field; it was he 
who brought the hard-pressed cavalry the relief that they had been 
so badly in need of. Moveover, inasmuch as the engagement that 
took place prior to General Wadsworth marching his brigades to the 
battle was mostly in the nature of a skirmish. General Buford's main 
object being to keep the enemy in check until such time as infantry 
relief came to him, it might be said that it was General Wadsworth 
who practically began the battle on the Union side. "Wlien General 
Wadsworth's men formed into line, and thej- had hardly time to do 
so before they were attacked, the Blue and the Gray began in earnest 
a famous battle. Quoting Napoleon, it was then, and afterwards, 
" some fighting." There are veterans now listening to me who can 
well corroborate this for they were there from the beginning. 

Of the regiments constituting the division of General Wadsworth 
(Cutler's and Meredith's Brigades) that first went into action, the 
Seventy-sixth New York was in the vanguard; then came the Fifty- 
sixth Pennsylvania, followed by the One Hundred and Forty-seventh 
New York. Those three regiments were posted on the north side of 
the railroad at places which are now in our vicinit}'. The One Hun- 
dred and Forty-seventh New York practically deployed on ground 
where General Wadsworth's statue stands. The Eighty-fourth New 
York (the Fourteenth Brooklyn Militia) and the, Ninety-fifth New 
York were posted a little south of the railroad. 

The Fifty-sixth Pennsylvania is credited with having the honor 
of firing the first infantry volley that was aimed at Confederate 
troops in the battle. 

The other brigade of the First Division, Meredith's, which came 
up almost at the same time as Cutler's Brigade, was posted south of 
ss 



3ame0 Samuel THIla&0wortb 

the railroad not far from where we are now, and it went into action 
at McPherson's ^Voods, near the Chanibershurg Pil<e. 

About ten o'clock on that morning of the first day's fight, with 
the arrival of the brigades of Cutler and JNIeredith, there began one 
of the fiercest conflicts that the Union forces ever took part in. Wn 
had hard-fought fields many and many a mile from Gettysburg 
to the Gulf and from the Atlantic seaboard to the JNIississippi, and 
farther west, but no field of battle where the Blue and the Gray con- 
fronted each other presented more awful carnage or greater casualties 
for the numbers engaged, than Seminary Ridge and ground near it 
on that eventful day of the first of July, 1863. 

The initial contest of the first day's fight had not, unfortunately, 
been long in progress when the Union Army lost one of its ablest 
generals. Despite friendly warnings and heedless of the danger 
that was around him — thinking more of the means of repulsing 
the enemy, who was causing havoc among his troops — the havoc that 
comes from well-aimed rifles and destructive artillery — than of his 
personal safety, and also realizing at the start that a great battle 
was impending — had in fact already begun — General Reynolds 
dashed into the zone of danger and fell mortally wounded at 10:1.5 
that July morning. His monument stands not far from General 
Wadsworth's, and taken into consideration with the statue that we 
are dedicating today the two monuments in a great measure help 
to make this particular locality hallowed ground. 

General Doubleday succeeded to the conmiand of the First Corps 
when General Reynolds was killed, lentil that sad occurrence his 
position was that of commander of the Third Division of the First 
Corps. He had arrived on the field in advance of his own division 
and helped to place Meredith's Brigade in position at McPherson's 
Woods. General Doubleday, to my mind, and I have studied closely 
the strategic and brilliant movements of the First Corps that he led 
on the morning and the afternoon of the first of July, 1863, was a 
worthy successor to General Reynolds. By what he was suddenly 
called on to do at a most critical hour, and the bold and brave stand 



3ame9 Samuel Mabswortb 

he made throughout the whole day, against vastly superior numbers, 
in my opinion, he made a record for himself that was hardly surpassed 
hy any commander at Gettysburg. 

To illustrate the galling fire that the brigades of General Wads- 
worth's Division had to face at the very outset, compelled as they 
were to go into action the very moment that they reached the battle 
ground, three of the regiments under him were in such peril of being 
overwhelmed after the first half hour of the engagement that it 
became necessary to order their temporary retreat. In this first half 
hour the Seventy-sixth New York suffered in killed or wounded 169 
out of 375 that they brought to the field ; the One Hundred and Forty- 
seventh New York suff'ered even more, losing in killed or wounded 
207 out of 380 present with the colors. And so it was with the other 
regiments as well. Nearly all of them suff'ered terrible losses. It 
was give and take in earnest and with deadly effect in this prelude 
to the great struggle. General Wadsworth and General Hcth, 
opposed to him, had set the pace that characterized the battle of 
Gettysburg all through until the end of the third day. The losses 
of the Confederate Army were also appalling at this time, and what 
is more the Confederates were repulsed. Cutler's Brigade and 
Meredith's made a resolute stand that morning, and they scored the 
first success for the Union Army in the battle of Gettysburg. The 
two strong Confederate brigades that they Avorsted sustained losses 
to the extent of half their numbers. Two entire Confederate regi- 
ments were captured, and a brigadier-general, General Archer, was 
made a prisoner. 

The scope that I have in mind for this short sketch does not 
permit me to go into details of the movements incident to the encounter 
that took place the early part of the first day and the violent struggles 
of the forces contending against each other. In themselves they are 
sufl^cient, short as the engagement was, to make an interesting war 
picture, apart from the greater conflict that ensued in the afternoon. 

In this ejjisode of the first day's fight, General Wadsworth won 
laurels for himself and the troops that he led to victory. The success 

40 



3ame9 Samuel Wa^swortb 

with which he had held his ground so far — the ground that he was 
ordered by General Reynolds to occupy — and the losses that he 
inflicted on the two brigades ojiposed to liiin, compelling them eventu- 
ally to fall back, is in itself enough to add lustre to his name. 

I have thus far described in outline the prelude to the liattle of 
the first day, at the end of wliich the Union troops were the victors. 
At its conclusion, as well as while it was going on, reinforcements 
continued to come to tlie Union Army from the south of Gettysburg 
and to the Confederates from the North. The other two divisions 
of the First Corps, under General Robinson and General Rowley, 
arrived on the field al)out noon, and at 1 :.*30, only half an hour before 
the fight was resumed, the Eleventh Corps, under General Howard, 
reached Gettysburg. 

But the additions to the Union Army were more than offset by 
the fresh troops that General Ewell brought with him to strenothen 
the divisions of General A. P. Hill, whose two other brigades had 
now also fallen into line. 

General Wadsworth being re-assigned to the ground occupied by 
him in the morning commanded his troops here on Seminary Ridge; 
and again it was his part to give battle to brigades that belonged to 
the divisions of General A. P. Hill. Posted opposite him on his right, 
which was supported by part of General Robinson's Division, was 
General Rode's Division, of General Ewell's Corps. General D<)ul)le- 
day commanded from the left of the Union lines and General Barlow, 
with General Early for an opponent, was on the extreme right. 
General Howard, who had now assumed control of the entire Union 
forces, put General Schurz in charge of the Eleventh Corps, General 
Schimmelfennig succeeding to the conmiand of General Schurz's 
Division. 

General Steinwehr's Division of the Eleventh Corj)s, which came 
with its other divisions, did not march as far as the l)attle ground. 
Instead, he was ordered by General Howard to occupy and fortify 
Cemetery Hill, a very wise precaution on the part of General 
Howard, as subsequent events proved. 

41 



3ame0 Samuel *^aIla^0wortb 

The newly-formed and augmented lines of battle were two miles 
long, reaching from the Fairfield Road to Barlow's Knoll, and form- 
ing almost a semi-circle to the west and north of the town. 

At two o'clock 42,000 men, composed of 2G,000 Confederate troops 
and 16,000 Union troops, were arranged in battle array. The fight 
was renewed not only with increased numbers but with increased finy. 
Scarcely at any time during the Civil War did soldiers in a battle 
fight with greater determination for the possession of a field than 
the two armies that faced each other on this occasion. To follow the 
movements of these two armies now and their terrific efforts to 
gain the upperhand of each other, their attacks and counter attacks, 
the awful losses suffered by both sides and the carnage that resulted, 
as regiment after regiment became depleted — many of them to the 
extent of sixty per cent of their numbers — would, in order to narrate, 
even in outline, a tithe of what took place, occupy more time than 
I have allowed myself for this summary review of the battle. 

One Confederate regiment alone, the Twenty-sixth North Caro- 
lina, lost in this battle of the first day, between killed and wounded, 
.588 men; and of three Union regiments, one of them, the Twenty- 
Fourth IMichigan, lost 363; the One Hundred and Fifty-first Pennsvl- 
vania lost 337 and the One Hundred and Fortj'-ninth Pennsylvania, 
336. 

And speaking of casualties, it is on record that the division of 
General Wadsworth sustained greater losses in the battle of Gettys- 
burg — most of them the first day — than any of the other divisions 
composing the I^nion Army. Some of General Wadsworth's regi- 
ments when they retired to Cemetery Hill and Culp's Hill the even- 
ing of the first day had hardly enough men left, fit to continue the 
fight, to make a complete company. 

The First Corps and the Eleventh Corps of the Union Army 
being vastly outnumbered on the afternoon of the first day they were 
eventually overpowered and driven back on the town of Gettysbin-g, 
after almost unparalleled resistance and sacrifice on their part. "\MiiIe 
retreating through the to^vn on their way to Cemetery Hill, pursued 

43 



3ame0 Samuel TKIlabewortb 

by the Confederates, the battle was continued, and even there 2,500 
Union soldiers were made prisoners, including 145 officers. 

Two months previous to the battle of Gettysburg the celebrated 
" Stonewall " Jackson was killed in the battle of Chancellorsville, 
but the fame of his prowess and his dashing tactics, which for so long 
a time made his name such a significant factor to reckon with in 
encounters between the Gray and the Blue, still survived in the troops 
that he had frequently led to victory, and which were part of the 
Army of Northern Virginia that had come to invade Pennsylvania. 

As well as the First Corps and the Eleventh Corps being out- 
numbered (they were only two to three) the assertion has often been 
made that their several divisions failed to act in concert. But it 
should not be overlooked in taking this into account that unprepared- 
ness made errors on this occasion unavoidable. The battle itself de- 
veloped from mere reconnoitering expeditions that both sides sent out 
in the morning in their attempts to locate each other. 

It is on record that General Alexander, who was General Long- 
street's Chief of Artillerjs said that the fighting of the First Corps 
in the first day's battle equalled, if it did not surpass, anything the 
Confederate troops opposed to it had seen or encountered from the 
commencement to the close of the Civil War. Confederate testimony 
has also established the fact that until finally outflanked and forced 
to yield their ground to superior numbers the regiments of the 
Eleventh Corps fought heroically and made an obstinate resistance. 

In this phase of the battle of Gettysburg the question has often 
been asked, why did not General Ewell, in command of the Confed- 
erates on the afternoon of the first day, endeavor to take possession 
of Cemetery Hill, where the Union Army was found entrenching 
itself immediately after being forced to retreat from adjacent ground? 
General Ewell has given as his reason for not continuing this attempt 
that his men were too fatigued for further eff'ort to prosecute the 
fight with any chance of success. This, also, goes to show that the 
First Corps and the Eleventh Corps exerted themselves and sacrificed 
themselves to the utmost the first day. 

43 



3amc9 Samuel 'Ma&swortb 

A historian of the battle of Gettysburg has said that a campaign 
and a battle are to be judged by the outcome. If the Union troops 
did not gain the battle of the first day, thej' gained what was invaluable 
to them for immediate and subsequent defense — those splendid van- 
tage grounds afforded by Cemetery Hill and Gulp's Hill — where 
they had retreated and where they waged such successful battle the 
following day and the day after. To have and to hold Cemetery Hill 
and Gulp's Hill and to use them as the means for holding Gettysburg 
was the main prize that the Union commanders had set their hearts 
on from the beginning. 

Had the First Corps and the Eleventh Corps fought with less 
stubborn resistance than they did, and had they not inflicted such 
heavy losses on the enemy while their own numbers were becoming 
depleted, the Confederate troops might have been able to seize and to 
hold Cemetery Hill. ^^Hiat the result of tliis would have been is and 
always will be a matter of conjectm-e, but it is certain that it would 
have put the Union Army at a great disadvantage. At those places 
the Confederate forces would have been better favored as to position 
than they were on Seminar}^ Ridge and the other points where they 
were massed. 

Deeds of valor took place on this part of the battlefield of Gettys- 
burg where we are assembled to-day that will be remembered as long 
as the story of the battle is read; and on that eventful morning and 
afternoon of the first of July, 1863, commanding his troops with 
determination and valor. General AVadsworth was in the thick of the 
fight throughout. His retreat, when he did retire, was effected in 
good order, nor was it until his right and left were out-numbered and 
outflanked and his amnmnition exhausted that he fell back. 

In gazing on General Wadsworth's noble and newly-erected statue 
here to-daj^ and contemplating the dignified and Avorthy ceremonies 
with which it is being dedicated, with his son, his grandson and his 
great-grandchildren participating therein, his exemplary career and 
his disinterested and patriotic motives remind me of the words of 
the poet, " The path to duty is the way to glory." Duty, first, last, 
u 



3amc9 Samuel llUabswortb 

and at all times, General Wadsworth put above everything else. He 
was willing to sacrifice everything to the end that the North and 
the South should not be severed. He took a noble part in the her- 
culean effort of upholding the cause of the Union and died fulfilling 
what he felt was his duty to his country. 

General Wadsworth was undoubtedly a remarkable man, whether 
considered as a citizen or as a soldier. " When the cresset of war 
blazed over the land " and a call went forth from the government of 
the day for help to save the Union, General Wadsworth responded 
to that call immediately and voluntarily; and he did this too at an 
age (he was then 54 years old) when most men circumstanced as he 
was would have preferred not to go to the front. With such wealth, 
social distinction and family ties as were his, the prospect of enjoying 
the evening of life at his home in Geneseo would have persuaded a 
less gallant and patriotic and disinterested man to shun the dangers 
and the hardships of conflict. 

Nor was General Wadsworth's career of usefulness in public life 
confined to the battlefield. Before the war broke out, he was actively 
engaged and i^rominently identified with many enterjjrises of benefit 
to the community. That he received the nomination for governor of 
New York in 1862 shows that he was a man of distinction in his 
time and in his State. 

The State of New York, always to the front when it comes to 
the matter of doing honor to the memory of the citizen soldier, by 
erecting this statue, has paid a well-deserved tribute to a most deserv- 
ing patriot and war leader. And it is not General Wadsworth alone 
that makes this hallowed ground and its precincts of sjjecial interest 
to New York. New York's part in what was achieved and endured 
on the battlefield of Gettysburg during the three days that the conflict 
raged occupies a large and important portion of the story of the 
battle. Indisputably, however, it happened that New York State 
was foremost in the first day's conflict. A New York soldier fired 
the first shot in the battle and the first man killed in the battle was a 

45 



3ame0 Samuel Mabewortb 

New York soldier. A division of the First Corps, General Wads- 
worth's Division, was the first division that came to the relief of 
Buford's Cavalry when they were being forced back by the advanc- 
ing Confederates. Of the five regiments constituting the leading 
brigade of this division four of them were New York regiments, the 
Seventy-sixth being in the vanguard. On the first day as well, it is 
especially worth noting that the six divisions of the Union Army 
engaged were commanded by New York Generals — Doubleday, 
Robinson and Wadsworth, of the First Corps, and Schurz, Steinwehr 
and Barlow of the Eleventh Corps. 

At Culp's Hill, General Wadsworth's regiments rendered splendid 
service on the night of July 2nd, during the attack of Johnson's Con- 
federate Division on that position, then constituting the extreme right 
of the Union Army. All the troops of the Twelfth Corps had been 
withdrawn from their works to proceed to the assistance of the left 
wing of the army and only Greene's Brigade of the Twelfth Corps, 
was left to defend the Corps front. The Confederates attacked 
Greene's Brigade desperately, making many successive charges in 
the endeavor to overwhelm the small brigade. During this night 
battle General Wadsworth sent over the Eighty-fourth New York 
(Fourteenth Brooklyn IMilitia), the One hundred and forty-seventh 
New York and Sixth Wisconsin to assist Greene in his magnificent 
defense and they rendered splendid service to the Twelfth Corps 
Boys. The Eighty-fourth New York remained with the Twelfth 
Corps until the termination of the battle on the right. On the after- 
noon of the 3rd of July, while the charge of Pickett was impending 
and while the Confederate shells were hurtling over every portion 
of the Union line there was dread uncertainty as to where the Con- 
federate attack would occur. To assist General Wadsworth against 
this threatened movement General Greene detached the One hundred 
and second New York, of his brigade. Your humble servant, then 
commanding the One hundred and second New York, reported to 
General Wadsworth in person and by him was directed to the left 

46 




MAJOR JAMES W. WADSWORTH, U. S. VOLS. 

^'on of General Wadsworth 



3ames Samuel *WIla^9\\)0^tb 

of his line, where it reinforced the troops there in position. Fortu- 
nately no attack occurred, but Greene's boj-s were ready to help Wads- 
worth's men to the last gasp. 

Colonel Lewis R. Stegnian: As I announced when introducing 
him to you, the Rev. AVm. T. Pray, the gentleman who favored us 
by offering the opening jirayer for this function, is one of the soldier 
boys who took part in the battle that was fought on this Held; and I 
have now the pleasure of presenting to you another Gettysburg 
veteran, Captain Albert M. JNIills, Eighth New York Cavalry, the 
orator of the day. As you will remember, I had occasion to refer to 
Gamble's Brigade in the course of the remarks I have made. Gam- 
ble's Brigade it was that was gallantly resisting the Confederate 
advance when General Wadsworth arrived on this field. Captain 
IVlills knows all about this for he was with Gamble's Brigade on that 
memorable morning. I also wish to say that Captain Mills was once 
a Senator of the State of New York. 



47 



H^^rc0S of Captain Hlbcrt fID. flDills, in. S. D., 

Stb 1H. L'. Cavalrg, ©amble's Jevitia^c, JGuford'a Cavalrg 



Mr. Ciiaikmax, Comkades and Fellow Citizexs: 

THERE Avas an honorable custom observed by the ancient 
Romans, that those nearest the dead spoke at the funeral. 
Somewhat in accord with that way the Empire State of 
New York, and its people, by their officials, l)v their delegated re})re- 
sentatives, and by the spontaneous movement of patriotic citizens 
are engaged in this ceremony at this time, and on this consecrated 
spot. 

The renowned career and achievements of General Wadsworth 
are, and always will be, a prominent part of the history of the Re- 
public. The story of the United States cannot be well told without 
reciting his life, his deeds and his death, but in a nearer and more 
sacred sense he belongs to our State. Out from him and the illus- 
trious family of which he is one, there shines a glorious light, which 
illumines and brightens all the highways and byways of public and 
private life in the Empire State of New York. So it is that with 
hearts filled with sorrow and pride — sorrow that he died — jjride 
that he lived, we come here at this time to erect this votive stone and 
adorn it with the laurel and the vine, expressive in some small degree 
of the love, the gratitude and the reverence, which are especially ours. 

A brief review of the life and origin of him whom we honor em- 
phasizes the thought now expressed. 

James Samuel Wadsworth came from genuine New England 
stock; he sprang from tliat race of wise, resolute and virtuous men, 
who through nuich suffering and hardship conceived, created and 
established on this continent the beneficent form of government under 
which we live. In the year 1 790, only thirteen years after the adop- 
tion of our first State Constitution, James Wadsworth, father of him 

4S 



3amc0 Samuel TKIla^svi>o^tb 

whom we commemorate, being only twenty-two years-o^ge, moved 
from Connecticut into the western part of the territory of the State 
of New York. By what seems now to have been ahiiost a fortuitous 
foresight, he acquired and settled upon many thousands of acres in 
the fertile Genesee Valley. At that early day there was not nmch 
of civilization, or of the works of civilized man, west of what is now 
Oneida County, and on what was essentially a frontier, he settled, 
lived his life and became the foremost man of Western New York. 
James "Wadsworth, though a pioneer, was a cultured, educated man. 
Only three years before coming to his new home he had graduated 
from Yale College. He had broad views with regard to public 
matters, views which were in advance of those of most men of his 
time. He lived until the year 1844. His life was rich in public 
service and philanthropic deeds. He was known and is recorded in 
history as a wise and generous philanthropist, constantly doing deeds 
of kindness and service to men. He was a foremost character in the 
rapid development and formative life of his State. He was active 
in the causes of education and religion. He printed and circulated, 
at his own expense, publications on the subject of education, and 
offered a premiuiu to the towns which should first establish school 
libraries. As early as 1811 he proposed that this State should estab- 
lish normal schools. More than a century ago, this broad-minded, 
public-spirited citizen, before all others, suggested and proposed that 
method of public education, which during the century came to be a 
State system of schools where teachers are taught to intelligently 
teach. In 1838 he procured the enactment by the State of the school 
library law, which has grown to be a substantive branch of our State 
government. He founded a public library and institution for 
scientific lectures and endowed it liberally ; and in his numerous sales 
of lands stipulated that one hundred and twenty-five acres of each 
township should be free for a school, and another portion of the same 
size for a church. It is said that his donations for the cause of 
education reached and exceeded the sum of one hundred thousand 

49 



3amcs Samuel TI^Ha^0wortb 

dollars, besides the numberless other public and private acts of 
philanthropy, which graced the life of this remarkable man. For a 
half century he was engaged in devising, promulgating and estab- 
lishing measures for the advancement of his fellowmen. From that 
useful life, there came to the human race more blessings and more 
good than have come from most of the battles and most of the wars 
in which mankind has been engaged. 

AVith James Wadsworth there came and lived a brother, "Wil- 
liam Wadsworth, who did his full measure of patriotic duty. He, 
too, was public-spirited and aided in all measures of advantage to 
his neighbors and the State. In the war of 1812, when the United 
States was in a struggle to maintain its orderly march to the first 
rank among the nations of the earth, William Wadsworth promptly 
volunteered to fight, and as a brigadier-general in the army in com- 
mand of New York troops rendered valuable service to his country. 

Of such ancestry was the man whom we now celebrate. James 
Sanmel Wadsworth was born in the year 1807 at Geneseo, N. Y. 
He was liberally educated in the public schools and at Harvard 
College. As a young man he came into the possession of much 
valuable land, many of the ancestral acres in the State of New 
York. According to the standards of that time, he Avould be regarded 
as a man of wealth, but wealth was never committed to a more 
worthy trustee. Eminently and lavishly he devoted the talent which 
fortune had entrusted to him to the welfare of others, until, like his 
father, he was widely known as a philanthropist. In politics Wads- 
worth was originally a democrat of the strictest sect, but his sense 
of justice, his spirit of sj'mijathy, would not tolerate a system which 
kept human beings in bondage, and when the enormity of that 
national sin was made to appear he promptly, in 1848, joined the 
anti-slavery movement. In the decade which succeeded that year 
the revolution in the thought and action of our people was most 
rapid, and when the formation of the Republican Party, in 1856, 
seemed to him to crystalize the purposes of freedom in which he 

50 



3amc0 Samuel IKIlaDdwortb 

believed he was found in its foremost ranks. He was a presidential 
elector in Fremont's campaign, and again in 1860, when Abraham 
Lincoln became the nominee of his party. From that time on 
events moved rapidly in the United States. The trend of affairs was 
observed and intelligently understood by Wadsworth. He had heard 
the threats of Secession from South Carolina in 1832 and the declara- 
tion of Jackson that the Union of States must be preserved. He 
had heard the great debate on the floor of the Senate in 18.50, when 
tion of Jackson that the Union of States must be preserved. He 
abundant power to preserve its integrity and enforce its laws, and 
now, in 1860, he saw the fire which for many years had smouldered 
in the political edifice, bursting forth a consuming conflagration, 
threatening to destroy the State. At first there were suggestions 
of peace. Wadsworth was a man of peace, and as a delegate he 
attended the peace convention in Washington in 1861. But peace 
soon vanished and war was declared. He saw what was then a 
strange situation, that in this country men were needed to engage 
in battle. There was nothing but love of country to induce this 
eminent citizen to enter the war. He was in the prime of life. He 
was fortunate in his worldly establishment; he was wealthy; he was 
surrounded by those whom he loved and who loved him. Every 
condition of life was congenial, and all things concurred to induce 
him to remain at home and live his life in dignity and peace, but 
the Union was in danger and he hesitated not a moment. He quickly 
saw that there was need of public aid. The lines of communication 
with Washington had been paralyzed by traitors, and the new ad- 
ministration there was in distress for needed material with which to 
carry on the government. Out of his own private fortune, he bought 
and loaded two ships with supplies, which he personally conducted 
to Washington, and unloaded to nourish the government in its 
poverty. Then armed rebels appeared at the gates of Washing- 
ton. He promptly volunteered for the army, and as an aide to 
General INIcDowell rendered valuable service in the battle of Bull 

51 



3ame0 Samuel TICla^0VPortb 

Run. On the field he bravely faced the first fierce fire that swept 
up from the Southern furnace of rebellion, and from that day to his 
death he was an able, valiant, self-sacrificing soldier of his country. 
At Bull Run he stayed in the fiercest of the fight and lost his horse, 
which was shot under him. After tliat he was placed in conmiand 
of the District of Columbia and the City of Alexandria, charged with 
the duty of receiving and forming the new regiments of volunteers 
and enforcing military regulation at the capital. At this time there 
occurred an incident, which illustrates the kindness of heart of one 
man and the loyalty and gratitude for a friendly act of another. It 
is so gracious a story that I cannot refrain from telling it here. I 
have never seen it in print, but the truth of it is vouched for from an 
authentic source. The City of Washington was infested with spies, 
who in various forms of disguise came to gain information for the 
enemy. An humble farmer who had come in from his farm in 
Virginia was taken by the provost guards as a spy and held in con- 
finement for days. Finally his case came to General Wadsworth 
for disjjosition. After a brief examination he discovered that the 
man was not a spj' l)ut a simple farmer, as he claimed to be. It also 
appeared that during his enforced stay the man had spent his money 
and was without means. The General from his private purse gave 
the man an abundant store of money and sent him rejoicing to his 
A^irginia farmer's liome. Two years later, on the sixth of ISIay. 1804. 
in the fierce battle of the Wilderness, General Wadsworth received 
a mortal wound. He fell within the lines of the enemy, where he 
died tAvo days later, on the 8th of iSIay, 1864. That happened on a 
farm which adjoined the land of the man whom Wadsworth had 
befriended at the provost guardhouse in AVashington. The farmer 
sought out his wounded friend, nursed him as best he could, and 
after death tenderly buried the body in the door yard of his home. 
When the battle had passed, the man communicated with the bereaved 
family at the Xortli. and now this patriotic soldier sleeps with his 
fathers in God's choice acre, in the beautiful Valley of the Genesee. 

53 




HON. JAMES W. WADSWORTH, JR., U. S. SENATOR 
Grandson of General Wadaworth 



3ames Samuel Mabswortb 

Wadsworth was not a liolidaj' soldier. From the first clash of 
arms to the day he died he rendered constant, active and arduous 
service in the field. He marched, suffered and fought with the 
soldiers whom he led, and with signal military skill he directed the 
division in the Army of the Potomac that was entrusted to his com- 
mand. In camp he was kind and considerate; in hattle he was alert, 
exacting and brave. No matter how thick or fierce the conflict was 
he took no heed of personal danger. He saw only the danger that 
threatened his beloved country. 

One of the most serviceable days of Wadsworth's life, was here, 
where we are today. On the first day of July, 1863, at the opening 
of the battle of Gettysburg, he rendered a most important service 
to the Union forces in that crucial conflict. As my memory returns 
to that eventful day I feel in some sort justified and privileged to 
speak to some of the men whom I see before me. Well do I remember 
it. As an humble member of Gamble's Brigade of General Buford's 
Division of Cavalry, on the 30th of June, I came for the first time 
to Gettysburg. On that day we moved out here and that night 
camped on this ridge. Early the next morning the enemy appeared 
and before nine o'clock the fighting was fast and furious. We had 
only two light brigades of cavalry. Gamble's and Devin's, which were 
only about three thousand cavalrymen armed with carbines. These 
two small brigades and Calef's Light Battery of four guns were the 
only Union troops then at Gettysburg, while Heth's Division of Hill's 
Corps of Infantry was marching down the Chambersburg Pike. I 
remember with what feelings of anxiety and dismay we contemplated 
the situation. Up to that time, in the war, victory had gone to the 
rebels on almost every field. They had resisted us in their territory, 
and now they were boldly invading the North. Success for them on 
this field would be fraught with most dire consequences to the Re- 
public. For more than an hour we fought, momentarily expecting 
to hear the rebels yell and see the swift charge of superior numbers 
which should sweep us from our position. We held our line down 

S3 



3amc0 Samuel TRIla^swortb 

there along Willoughbv Run as best we could, hoping that rein- 
forcements would come, fearing that they would not, until finally, 
at about ten o'clock in the forenoon we beheld the form of General 
Wadsworth, leading forward at a rapid pace, two brigades — Cutler's 
and Meredith's — of the First Division of the First Corps of In- 
fantry. They moved rapidly into position and took up the line of 
battle. How grateful and glad we battered troopers were then. 
I see before me now some of the men who were in that rescue. There 
were four regiments from New York, the Seventy-sixth, Eighty- 
fourth (Fourteenth Brooklyn Militia), the Ninety-fifth and One 
hundred and forty-seventh, which with the Fifty-sixth Pennsylvania 
were those of Cutler's Brigade. A desperate fight followed the 
arrival of these forces, which lasted with varying fortune, until nearly 
noon, when Wadsworth and his division had driven Heth and his 
division back across the Willoughby Run. 

But that was not all, nor the most important thing, accomplished 
by that fight. Precious time was gained in which to bring up other 
Corps of Meade's Army to join the battle, which it was apparent the 
enemy had decided to force on this field. In the afternoon of that 
day another attack came from the enemy and fighting followed all 
day, and at night our troops had been forced back to Cemetery Hill 
and Culp's Hill. That night Wadsworth and his men fortified 
Culj)"s Hill, and in the l)attles of the next two critical days rendered 
notable service. 

Not onlv was James S. Wadsworth on this field and through this 
battle, but he had two sons who were also here. His eldest son 
Charles Wadsworth, was on his father's staff helping in the battle. 
Another son, Craig Wadsworth, was on the staff of General Reynolds 
when he was killed. Both of these sons remained in the war and 
attained prominence in the service, being constantly active at the 
front and in the actual fighting. Besides that. General Wadsworth 
had another son, of whom, inasmuch as he is now present, I beg 
pardon if I briefly speak. James W. Wadsworth, the third son of 

54 



3amc0 Samuel Ma^s\vortb 

the General, was a mere boy when his father (hed. In November of 
the same year, 1804, he entered the service in the Army of the Poto- 
mac and was useful as a brave and intelligent soldier, especially at 
the battle of Five Forks, on the staff of the Commander of the 
Fifth Corps, his service was conspicuous, so much so that he was 
brevetted a major for meritorious service in the field. So greatly 
was General Wadsworth and his family devoted to the country's 
cause. 

The battle of Gettysburg was as crucial and important in its 
effects as any conflict recorded in history. It stands with Marathon, 
Arbella, Hastings, Tours, Cressy and Waterloo among the decisive 
battles of the world. Indeed, its consequences to mankind are prob- 
ably more important than any of those others. When the sun had 
set on this field on the third of July, 1863, it was proclaimed to the 
world for the first time that here in America men were and always 
would be all and altogether free. It was proclaimed to the nations 
of the earth that the American Union would not be dissolved, but 
would be preserved. There were campaigns and marches and battles 
after that, but it was on this chance field of Gettysburg where the 
solenm vow of the people to unshackle the slave and j)crpctuate the 
American Union, at whatever cost, was redeemed. Of all this glory 
and sacrifice Wadsworth was a great part. After the lapse of fifty 
years the few survivors of that day, with the luq^py generations which 
have come on since, with story and with song, commend and extol 
the part he played in the vivid drama of his time, but we can add 
nothing to his fame. Our acts of to-day will pass from memory, our 
words will be forgotten; even this granite monument which is now 
so firmly placed may totter and fall, but while the blessed institu- 
tions upon which our liberties rest and endure his name will live. 
His life was pure and unselfish; his faith was the most exalted and 
abiding. He achieved the highest fortune that can come to a patriot, 
the privilege to die for his country in the right. He was actuated by 
no sordid purpose. Nor vanity, nor military glory, nor desire for 

55 



3ame0 Samuel TRaat>0wortb 

personal distinction, moved him. He saw that the destiny of the 
nation, the failm-e or success of the greatest experiment in hmnan 
hberty, was at stake, and he gave every effort and resource he could 
command, and finally his precious life, in the tremendous battle for 
the everlasting truth. His useful life places him in the rank of the 
few noblest citizens of the Republic. His glorious death crowns 
him an immortal hero, whose valor and service and sacrifice will be 
gratefully remembered and reverently recounted so long as the deeds 
of men are told. 

Colonel Lewis R. Stegman: It happens that a large part of the 
honors incident to this dedication has fallen to the cavalry. General 
Horatio C. King, who comes next on the programme, enjoys the dis- 
tinction of having been a member of the far-famed Cavalry Corps 
which was conunanded b}- General Sheridan. It is not necessary for 
me to say much in introducing General King to you; he is well known 
in veteran circles all over the country. For several decades General 
King has been the Secretarv of the Societv of the Army of the 
Potomac. The interesting addresses to his credit at functions such 
as this are numerous and they have often been printed. And as well 
as speeches, he is, also, the author of a long list of spirited poems. 
A great many of you here to-day will recall with what signal success 
General King presided at the ceremonies of " Xew York Day at 
Gettysbm-g " a year ago last July, on the occasion of the fiftieth 
anniversary celebration. General King's health, in consequence of his 
having been stricken ill last spring, is not as good as when you heard 
him last on this field; but we are all delighted that he has so far 
recovered his strength as to be able to come here to-dav. 



56 



ED^rcss of General Horatio C. Iktng, ia. S. D., 

Sbert£>an'0 Cavalrg 



JNIr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen and Comrades: 

ABOUT six months ago I was very seriously sick, and though 
here to-day I have not yet fully recovered my strength. 
When my beloved associates on the New York Monuments 
Commission asked me a few weeks ago if I would make a short 
address on this occasion my courage began to fail me. I was afraid 
that I would not be able to do it. For more than fifty years I did 
not know what it was to feel ill. Now my ambition has always been 
to be the last survivor of the Civil War. Well, I have just passed 
through an attack that would kill a less vigorous man. Now, I hope 
to be here for at least another decade and round out forty-seven 
years as Secretary of the Society of the great Army of the Potomac. 

Said Henry Ward Beecher, " Above all earthly things is my 
country dear to me." The lips that taught me to say ' Our Father ' 
taught me to say ' Fatherland ' ". On this ground, consecrated by 
the great sacrifice, this feeling of patriotism comes to us with over- 
whelming force. Our native land, our country by birth or l)y adop- 
tion, is the light which should attract us to the highest forms of life. 
It should inspire us with sacred ambition and make our greatest aim 
to do only such things as shall increase her honor, promote her pros- 
perity and hold her up to the rest of the world as the embodiment 
of wise morality, and the exponent of all that is best in social govern- 
ment and practical conduct of civil affairs. The greatest nation is 
the best nation. It is the popular idea. It is the nearest approach 
to the perfect management that may be attained by hmiianity. 

In the providence of God ninety millions of our people are in 
peace and comparative comfort, ^^^len Europe is struggling in the 
throes of war, whose influence extends to our land, we are neverthe- 

57 



3ame6 Samuel TKHa^swortb 

less pursuing our own way without serious local concern. Our 
sufferings are trivial: our outlook is hopeful, and when ultimate 
peace shall be restored, the land will spring into an unexampled 
prosperity. 

A great war is usually based upon some great difference of opinion 
and clash between the contending nations. In too few cases the cause 
is really of no great importance. In our civil contest the question of 
whether this nation should be made free was of infinite importance. 
The contest could not be settled or compromised. Three million 
slaves called for liberty and the civilized nations in all parts of the 
world demanded the removal of this blot from our escutcheon. To- 
day I know of no rational being who asks for a restoration of slavery. 
The object justified the war and its results made us the great nation 
that we are. 

The change that has taken place in the past fifty years marks an 
era not favorable to perpetual comfort. The struggle for wealth and 
the power which money gives have gradually displaced high moral and 
intellectual culture until now a new political revolution is working to 
kill the desperate encroachments of the money greed. The war in 
Europe is a struggle simply for commercial sujiremacy. It is a 
test as to the right of Germany to dominate all other nations in con- 
trolling the destiny of Europe. The enormous growth of militarism 
has at last broken out in a declaration of war, made without pre- 
liminary complaint or notice, and the effort bj' a surprise and quick 
movement to capture Paris before the opposing nations could prepare 
and mobilize their forces. This is not the time for criticism or pro- 
phecy. We now may not clearly understand the sublime movements 
of Providence. The result will show. But whosoever should win, I 
pray that the peace when concluded will mark the end of the last 
great war. The great destroyer that razes cities, demolishes cathe- 
drals, libraries and irreplaceable relics of art nmst himself be laid low 
and that universal peace, prosperity and happiness prevail through- 
out the world, with God over all. 

58 



3amcs Samuel Taila&6wortb 

The echoes of the reverbei-ating thunders of the grim and ghastly 
civil war have melted away and only its memories, softened by the 
lapse of time, remain. The bitterness engendered by fratricidal 
strife has been forgotten by the men who met each other in deadly 
combat, and wily, brave and seemingly implacable foes now greet 
each other with fraternal embrace and recount with lively interest 
and without acrimony, achievements of the herculean and protracted 
struggle. A little over a year ago, more than fifty thousand of the 
surviving veterans, wearing both the blue and the gray, gathered 
here to sing praises and to pledge themselves to civil peace. 

Let it not be supposed that in their reconciliations there is any 
concession that the North did not fight in a righteous cause. The 
South, too, fought with equal and desperate zeal in what they believed 
to be a just cause. "\Mien I am asked if secession was right, the 
answer is that the question was settled by the arbitrament of war 
and is bej'ond discussion. In extending the right hand of fellowship, 
we yield nothing to principle. We but maintain that fraternal sj^irit 
which characterized the immortal Lincoln, who " with malice toward 
none and charity for all pressed toward the right as God gave him 
to see the right." The Grand Army of which he was the Commander- 
in-Chief and Idol marched forward cutting a broad swath through 
the confederacy with the flaming sword in one hand, while they 
presented the olive branch of peace in the other. Happily there was 
no peace and no compromise until freedom became the irrepressible 
watchword. 

And who were the men who did this great work ? Who that lived 
at the outbreak can ever forget the wild whirl of {patriotic excitement 
which animated every loyal heart. Nor was the South less loyal to 
its cause. Men moved with rapid tread looking into each other's 
eyes with strange inquiry, nerving themselves for the duty before 
them, resolved to do or die for their country. Husbands are separated 
from wives, sons from parents and kin, lovers from their sweethearts 
and if all the tears at parting could be gathered in one stream, it 

59 



3amc9 Samuel MaDswortb 

should wash from the face of the earth hideous war forever. It em- 
braced men in high authority and the workman in the field. The 
rich, the poor, the high, the low, one vast assemblage bent on the 
same pvu-pose, the salvation of the Union. ISIost conspicuous of those 
not a graduate of West Point, who tendered his services, was the 
citizen and soldier to whom we do honor to-day. Born in 1807, 
General Wadsworth was ten years beyond the age for military duty 
when he received his appointment as brigadier general of volunteers. 
Rich in wordly possessions he laid the care aside, in his efforts for 
the Union. At Fredericksburg and Gettysburg he manifested the 
highest military skill and in the uncertain contest in the Wilderness he 
met death while rallving his men. Horace Greelev in his "American 
Conflict" says: "The country's salvation claimed no nobler sacri- 
fice than that of James Wadsworth of New York. No one sm-- 
rendered more for his country's sake or gave his life more joyfully 
for her deliverance." Conspicuous in civil life, he won a crovrn of 
glory in his soldier devotion to his beloved land. But I need not 
dwell upon what has been eloquently portrayed by Col. Stegman 
and the orator of the day. Captain ^Mills. I note it simply as an 
exponent of that mighty enthusiasm wliich swept the Xorth. The 
idle boast of superior endowments of either party over the other had 
no foundation in fact. In the Revolution, in the war of 1812. in the 
contest with Mexico and in the Cuban War, Xorthern and Southern 
troops fought side by side in friendly rivah-y. not as to each other's 
powers, but as to who should best serve his country; and the names 
of Xorthern and Southern heroes stand equally high on the rolls of 
fame. 

We soldiers of the Civil War are no longer veterans of the greatest 
war of modern times. The fighting armies of millions or more men 
now engaged in Europe stagger our engagements of two hundred 
thousand men in any single battle, but the great civil war still holds 
its place as the greatest war for the greatest purpose in modern 
history. Of the magnificence of the armies which effected the final 

60 



3amc0 Samuel Mabevportb 

result of permanent peace, unparalleled in importance in the history 
of the world, who can speak in adequate terms of praise? There is 
no tongue so eloquent, no voice so melodious that can pronounce their 
eulogy or adequately sing of their heroic deeds. To you, my com- 
rades, who served for the most part with the Army of the Potomac, 
will recur the thought of the four years of masterly warfare from 
Bull Run to Appomattox. To the western armies all praise for the 
great work accomplished by them, but the heart of the nation and the 
eyes of the people were centered on the Army of the Potomac as its 
encircling embrace slowly engirdled the Capital of the Confederacy, 
the capture of which all men knew to mean the close of the great 
conflict, "What pen can fitly describe or what voice fully express the 
details of the heroic struggle. No finer body of soldiers ever walked 
the earth, and though frequently repulsed it was never defeated. It 
was at all times ready even after disheartening discomfiture to respond 
to the command, " forward," and would dare to follow where its 
commanders dared to lead. The aggregate casualties in the war 
will reach the appalling number of at least a half a million and of 
all those who gave up their lives or who bore the honorable badge 
of severe wounds, nearly two-thirds belonged to the Army of the 
Potomac. 

In the gathering at Washington, our first commander responded 
to the toast to the immortal army and this sentiment will remain in 
your hearts and mine while life lasts; he said: " I, as its earliest and 
only living commander, am proud to believe that the Grand Army of 
the Potomac stands the equal of any of the historic armies of the 
world, in efficiency, in valor and achievements. I was right when in 
the beginning of our campaign I said to you that man's measure of 
honor and glory would be filled to overflowing who could say that he 
belonged to the Army of the Potomac." 

The old Norsemen had many beautiful ideas in connection with 
death. Thus in the Lay of Atle, it is said of him who dies, that he 
goes to the other light. That the dead in the mounds were in a state 

61 



3amc9 Samuel 'CCla^9\vortb 

of consciousness is illustrated by the following passage from the 
Frithiof's Saga: 

" Now children lay us in two lofty graves. 
Down by the seashore, near the deep blue waves. 
Their sounds shall be to our souls music sweet. 
Singing our dirge as on the strand they beat 
When round the hills the pale moonlight is thrown 
And midnight dews fall on the Banta Stone 
We'll sit, O ! Thorston in our rounded graves 
And speak together o'er the gentle waves." 

Odin was pre-eminently the God of war. He who fell in battle 
came after death to Odin in Valhal and glorious was the life in Valhal. 
Regner Lodbrok thus ends his famous song the Krakurnal: 

" Cease my strain ; I hear a voice 
From realms whose martial souls rejoice; 
I hear the maids of slaughter call. 
High seated in their blest abodes, 
I soon shall quaff the drink of Gods. 
Tiie hours of life have glided by. 
I fall, but smiling shall I die." 

Comrades, we are all fast approaching the day when we shall 
stand in the presence of that vast army which has gone before. We 
see the faces of those who were dear and whose greeting will fill 
us -vN-ith cheer. We can say with the Apostle. " I have fought a good 
fight. I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: henceforth 
there is laid up for me a crown of rigliteousness. which the Lord, the 
righteous judge, shall give me at that day; and not to me only but 
unto all them also that love his appearing." 

Heroes of the war of our second independence, Hail and Fare- 
well I Saviors oi' our country, generations yet unborn shall rise up 
and call you blessed. Your comrades are fast gathering to their 
ranks and in a few short years or less, the last who wore the blue 
in the grandest war for the noblest purpose in the history of mankind 
will answer to the final roll call. There shall be reunited that glori- 
fied army which from "01 to "0,5 marched shoulder to shoulder, con- 
scious of right, indomitable of pm-pose. ready to die if only the nation 

63 



3ame0 Samuel MaDswortb 

might live, and in ages to come your great deeds will be remembered 
and lisping tongues shall speak the praises of those who riveted with 
bands of steel the irrefragible fabric of our noble Republic. 

Colonel Lewis R. Stegman: When I tell you that the name of 
INIajor James W. Wadsworth occupies the next number on our pro- 
granmie of exercises, I must admit that I am at a loss for words to 
adequately express my thoughts in introducing him to you; for Major 
Wadsworth is none other than the son of the General whose statue we 
are now dedicating. I congratulate Major Wadsworth heartilj' on 
his being the happy witness to the honors that are being paid to the 
memory of his father to-day. Major Wadsworth is the worthy son of 
a worthy father; and, Comrades, when I also say that he is a veteran 
of the Civil ^Var it will help to draw him all the nearer to you. He 
is one of three sons that followed the exami^le of their father by doing 
their part in the great work of saving the Union. This day, it seems 
to me, must be one of the most important days for jNIajor Wadsworth 
that he lias ever known. I will not attemj)t to interpret his feelings 
on this memorable occasion; but who, situated as he is now, could 
resist emotion; because as well as gazing on his father's statue, just 
unveiled, behold, seated on his left beside him, his son, the Hon. James 
W. Wadsworth, Jr. (whom it will be my pleasure to also present to 
you in a very short time) ; and, to make the third generation, behold, 
also, with them IVIaster Jeremiah Wadsworth and his sister Miss 
Evelin Wadsworth who, for the years to come, will always remember 
with pride that it was they who unveiled the statue to their great- 
grandfather on the battlefield of Gettysburg. Thrice honored I say 
is the memory of General Wadsworth by the presence here to-day 
of three generations of his family. 



■Rcmarha b^ nDajor 3ame0 W. TWla^swortb 



Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen and Veterans of the 
Army of the Potomac : 

IT is not for me to say much to you on this occasion. My part is 
to listen, and I have listened with great pride and with great 
pleasure to the many kind words said of my father. The 
citizens of the great State of New York have deemed it fit to honor 
his memory by erecting on this field, where he served so faithfully, 
this memorial ; and I wish to express on my own behalf and on behalf 
of my family our greatest gratitude and our greatest appreciation of 
this tribute to his memory. 

Every memorial and every statue should teach us a lesson. This 
memorial teaches me that the unassuming, patriotic citizen, devoted to 
his duty, and not afraid to perform it, in peace as well as in war, will 
be remembered and honored by his countrymen long after the dema- 
gogue and the charlatan are forgotten and despised. To you, veterans 
of the Army of the Potomac, who have come so many miles to pay 
this tribute to the memory of my father, I can only say, thank you, 
thank you from the bottom of my heart, and God bless you. 

Colonel Lewis R. Stegman : The speakers to whom you have lis- 
tened so far are all veterans of the Civil War. The comparatively 
young gentleman whom I am next to present to you was not born 
until some years after peace was declared between the North and the 
South. It is not his fault, therefore, that he is not able to address you 
as a comrade ; but he can do the next best thing to it — he can address 
you as the son of a comrade and as the grandson of General Wads- 
worth. In introducing to you the Hon. James W. Wadsworth, Jr., 
the son of oNIajor Wadsworth, whom you have just heard, I will not 
detain you long. As you will presently learn, Mr. Wadsworth can 
speak for himself. He is, as you know, one of the candidates for 

64 







cc 

UJ 
CD 

o 

I- 
o 
o 



< 

o 

o 

ui 
Q 

I- 
Z 
UJ 

S 

z 
o 



X 

I- 

CE 

o 

CO 

a 
< 

I- 
< 

> 
I- 

< 

a. 

_i 
< 

o 
u. 
li. 
O 



3ame0 Samuel Wla^swortb 

United States Senator nominated to succeed Elihu Root. Like him- 
self, his opponent in the coming election, the Hon. James W. Gerard, 
is one of the most estimable citizens of the Empire State of New York, 
and is at present occupying the position of Ambassador to Germany. 
We cannot, however, identify ourselves with political affiliations on an 
occasion such as this. All the same, I venture to say that should the 
people of the State of New York decide to elect a Republican senator 
next month to represent them at Washington, it can be depended on 
that Mr. Wadsworth will give a good account of his stewardship at 
the National Capital, just as he did at Albany when he was speaker 
of the Assembly there during a succession of terms. 



IRemarf^s t>v^ Ibon. 3nmcB m. "COa^swortb, 3r. 



3Ir. Chairman, L.\diks axd Gextlemex axd Veterans of the 
First Division of the First Corps; 

THE few remarks I shall make upon this occasion I shall ask 
your permission to make in the capacity of a member of the 
younger generation. From my youth, I will confess and 
with pride, I have been taught to read and inform myself of 
your deeds. ^Iv honored father, as soon as I was old enough 
to read a book, placed in my hands a work by Charles Charle- 
ton Coffin, the first book I ever read, entitled, " The Boys 
of "61." There is something fascinating and appealing to me 
when I come in personal contact with the heroes of that book. 
We of the younger generation who, as your successors, must carry the 
burden of the day, have read of the sublime courage which you 
showed on a hundred battlefields. We appreciate, I am sure, the 
spirit that inspired you and which Grant translated into living 
words when he declared, in 1864, " We will fight it out on 
this line, if it takes all smiimer." I hope that our generation 
also appreciates another phase of your devotion. You not only 
displayed in battle, sublime physical courage, but you dis- 
played unexampled civic courage in your capacity as citizens. For 
you knew well — and perhaps my generation does not know it so 
well — that on many an occasion and in more than one section of the 
Xorth and East, while you were risking your lives at the front, whole 
districts back at home turned against you and declared by this vote 
that the war was a failure. But you citizen soldiers never wavered; 
you declined to be diverted from your great purpose; you raised a 
political issue up to a lofty plane and made it one of pure patriotism. 
Let us hope that the public men of to-day and citizens generally may 
appreciate and adhere to your conception of politics and civic duty. 

66 



3ames Samuel TKHa^swortb 

To-day our dearest possession is the examjile set bj^ the men who 
saved the nation. The manner of their Hves, the things they stood 
for and the sacrifices they made nmst never l)e forgotten. Industry, 
thrift, sturdy self-reHance, riglit thinking, high courage and a pro- 
found recognition of a just and Ahnighty God — these are the tradi- 
tions they estabHshed for our guidance and inspiration. 

If this beloved Kepubhc is to survive and fulfill its destiny, the 
youth of to-day and to-morrow must forever cherish the memory of 
" The Boys of '61." 

Colonel Lewis II. Stegman: Ever since Abraham Lincoln de- 
livered his brief oration on this field which has become a world-wide 
classic, Gettysburg has continued to be a theme and a source of in- 
spiration for the jjoet no less than the orator. A poem has been 
specially written for this dedication, which the author, ]Mr. J. I. C. 
Clarke, will now read to you. INIr. Clarke is well known in literary 
circles in New York and he is well able to rise to the height of this 
occasion. For a great many years past his verses have been heard at 
important meetings in Xew York. Heroes and events of the Civil 
War are enshrined in his songs of America and ballads of battle; 
and one of his poems, " Kelly and Burke and Shea," is such a master- 
piece that no one would thing of compiling an anthology of American 
poetry without including it in his selections. It has in fact become 
a battle hymn. 

"Cbe Battle l^ears 

J6b J. IF. C. Clarhc 
Fair the processions of the Years of Peace: — 

The smiling wives, the laugh of girl and boy. 
School, field and factory and flocks increase, 

The artist dreaming in a dusk of joy. 
The flowering years that glide in long defile, 

Wliy should their high pavilions ever fall. 
Where gold is coined, where splendid sports beguile? 

Sudden a drumbeat and a trumpet's call! 
Peace like a futile phantom disappears 

Before tlie magic of the Battle Years. 

67 



3amc0 Samuel TOla^6vportb 

The gaping wounds, the heaping piles of dead, 

Reek of red slaughter where young life had bloomed, 
Fire-hlasted harvests and the nights of dread 

With great shells crashing o'er a city doomed — 
No more their horrors can the heart affright; 

Some deep life-thrill, some wondrous gift of soul 
Has flung War's image into golden light: 

A people turns to win a fearful goal. 
The warrior rides his sacrifice to greet — 

The last, the highest man for man can frame — 
He flings his glowing life at Freedom's feet. 

And fourfold generations bless his name. 
Ah, God so made us, lest at last we'd fail 

To stand at bay for Right, and, scorning fears, 
The fortressed might of flaunting Wrong assail. 

And take the challenge of the Battle Years. 



Loud-sounding down the vale of Time they come. 

The grim processions of the Battle Years, 
Their steps of thunder and the roll of drum, 

The glare of burning towns upon their spears, 
Their ragged flags aflap, tlieir broken lines 

Swaying in passion to be on and slay. 
From ev'ry eye a baleful glory shines 

Tho death in harness rides with their array. 
Day wavers over them to clouded night, and hark! 

Their bugles blaring forth a Nation's hymn. 
Their cannon flashing fire-tongues thro' the dark, 

\ ictors and conquered in a cluster dim. 
Thro' winds of women's cries, 'neath rain of tears 

Sweep the processions of the Battle Years. 

The battling men of Gettysburg! They pass 

In bristling columns with a flaming front. 
Face after face lifts haggard from the mass — 

White faces hardened in the battle brunt 
Where courage blindly into carnage ran 

On tides of hot devotion, till we see 
Meade. Hancock, Reynolds. WadsM-orth in the van. 

While stern and stark ride Longstreet, Hill and I.ee. 
Yea, even they who struck with Pickett's braves. 

Fought for a cause they counted high and dear; 
But God had ruled there should no more be slaves. 

And down these lines of battle made it clear. 

68 



3amc0 Samuel Wla^9wortb 

And high o'er all, behold, cloud-wrapped, arise 

A rugged martyr-face, careworn and kind, 
The pity of a wide world in his eyes. 

The sunniest hopes for mankind in his mind, 
As new worlds rose from clashing of the spheres. 

They gave us LINCOLN, our dread Battle Years. 

Colonel Lewis R. Stegman : "Wlienever we see prominent citizens 
of the State of Xew York in attendance at public functions of this 
character there is evidence of the interest that the State takes in 
them; and of this we have ample and encouraging testimony here 
to-day. We have among us a member of the Legislature of the 
Empire State (whom I am next to introduce to you), who is un- 
doubtedly a genuine friend of the old soldier. ^Many a time and 
oft has he given proof of this ; and not only are his sympathies with 
the veterans of the Civil War, but he is as well an authority on their 
deeds of valor and the movements of the armies to which they be- 
longed. The battlefields of the great war are an open book to him. 
It is, therefore, with great pleasure that I present to you the Hon. 
John F. :Murtaugh, Senator of the State of Xew York, and to 
whom, as I confess with gratitude, we are in a great measure indebted 
for this splendid outpouring of the citizens of our State who have 
come here to dedicate the statue of General Wadsworth. 



69 



IRemarl^s b\> Mon. 3obn jf. riDurtauab 



Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen and Veterans of the 
Army of the Potomac : 

IT is an honor to address you on this important occasion and upon 
this historic field. No battlefield in all the pages of history stirs 
the heart or ajJiieals to the imagination of an American like that 
of Gettysburg. It was the greatest battle of the most important 
war in all history. Gettysburg will always form the centerpiece of 
that war and around it all other battles assume a subordinate position. 

Fifty years ago, Gettysburg was the high tide of the Rebellion; 
it was the field upon which were performed feats of valor and acts 
of bravery of which Americans will forever be proud. Fifty years 
ago the smoke of the great battle had barely passed away ; the wreck- 
age of war was strewn everywhere ; the trees were scarred and marred 
by shot and shell and the fields were dotted with new-made graves. 

To-day it is a scene of peace. Tranquillity hovers over the scene 
once rent by the ravages of war. The legions of Meade and Lee 
have disappeared. They seem like spectral armies that move in the 
dim shadowy past. The horse and the plumed rider, the cannon and 
the cannoneer have passed away, and the chieftain and the warrior 
have fallen asleep. The trees have draAvn their coverings of bark 
over the wounds of battle. The history of the battle and the story 
of its valor are written in monuments of stone and tablets of bronze. 

Gettysburg has become the mecca of the patriotic American pil- 
grim, the high altar of American jjatriotism, and the shrine upon 
which American valor and braverj' are enthroned. Away ofl' in the 
distant future the American youth will praise you as the forefathers 
of the Revolution are now praised, and his proudest boast will be 
that his ancestors fought at Gettysburg. 

We come here as the representatives of New York to pay the 
honor which the State declares should be conferred on one of her 



3amcs Samuel Taaa&swortb 

illustrious sons. We assemble to dedicate this monument to one of 
the heroes of Gettysburg, to the memory of a man who rose to the 
rank of general without military education or military experience, 
whose valor and ability were tested in many a battle, who led the 
advance of the Federal infantry upon this historic field, whose men 
felt the first shock of the battle, and whose great fight won renown 
for the name of Wadsworth and a lasting glory to the American 
people. 

It is fitting that the State should remember its brave defenders; 
that it should erect this stone as an emblem — a lasting tribute to 
the noble sacrifice and jjatriotic devotion this man made for his State 
and Country. It is wise for the American people to honor the mem- 
ories of the men who fought and died, that American institutions 
should live. No nation can long survive that fails to honor its 
soldiers and defenders. One way to prejiare the nation for the wars 
of the future, is to honor the heroes of the past. That is why 
New York to-day, with military pomp and civic splendor, dedicates 
this monument to the memory of a great man — one of her first 
citizens in the time of peace, and one of her best soldiers in the time 
of war, one whose military achievements are worthy of the best tradi- 
tions of the American soldier, whose bravery here and whose death 
on another field will always i*emain a shining example of what a 
true American should be in the time of his country's need. 

Let this monument stand during the coming years overlooking 
the field where Wadsworth and his men fought so bravely. Let it 
remind future generations of the memory of the man who sacrificed 
his all that the nation might live. Let it stand in memory to the 
dead, in honor to the living, for an inspiration to our children and a 
reminder for future generations that the patriotic and the brave will 
ever be remembered as long as this great Republic exists. 

Colonel Lewis R. Stegman: For the second time, it is my 
privilege to call on a member of the Legislature of New York to 
address you; and in doing so I wish to assure you, for I know it 

n 



3ame5 Samuel Wla^swortb 

well, that you are going to listen to a gentleman whose zeal for the 
welfare of the veteran and whose appreciation of the hardships he 
endured and the services he rendered the nation are established facts. 
To this esteemed friend of ours, also applies what I have said of 
Senator Murtaugh. Both of them have shown that they are fully 
mindful of the public gratitude that the veteran has earned and in 
your behalf and in my o'n-n behalf I thank them sincerely for the kindly 
interest that they take in us. Consequently it is with joy that I now 
present to you the Hon. Thaddeus C. Sweet, Speaker of the Assembly 
of the State of Xew York, whose home is in Phoenix, in the County 
of Oswego, the county where one of the regiments participating in 
this dedication was originally organized. 



79 



IRemarfts bp Ibon. ^babbeus C. Sweet 



Colonel Stegman, Veterans and Friends: 

WE have listened to-day to a rehearsal, by competent author- 
ities, of the conflict which took place on this field a little 
more than fifty-one years ago ; and on taking into considera- 
tion the results wrought by that great event, it is obvious that the 
destiny of this Republic was guided by the hand of Providence. 
God gave to this world his Son, not to condemn the world, but, 
through him, that the world might be saved; and likewise God gave 
to this nation this son of the North, that the integrity of this nation 
might be preserved. You have heard a review of General Wads- 
worth's career — of the great service he rendered his county. When 
time shall have crumbled to decay this statue that we are now 
dedicating and when time shall have effaced the name from the 
pedestal the fame of James Samuel Wadsworth will still be pre- 
served in the hearts of the American people. Though dead, yet shall 
he live. 

^\Tien General Wadsworth led his troops on this very ground 
where we are now assembled I was not born; but I am able to judge 
some of the sterling qualities that characterized him by the sterling 
qualities of his grandson, with whom it has been my honor to serve 
in the State Assembly of New York. I know from my own ex- 
perience that all that has been said of General James S. Wadsworth 
is true. 

My home is in Oswego Count\% and I was never more proud of 
that fact than I am to-day, on seeing here so many of the survivors 
of the 147th regiment, one of the regiments that fought so gallantly 
on this battlefield. 

We have this morning listened to the interesting description of 
the battle of Gettysburg by Colonel Stegman. We have also 

73 



3ames Samuel Ma^swortb 

listened this afternoon to an account of the valorous service rendered 
by the boys of '61 under General Wadsworth. Still there are other 
companies and other regiments that won renown no less on this 
battle ground, and not the least among those by whose bravery I was 
impressed is the First INIinnesota. ^Miile the Union Army was 
tlu'owing its men into proper position the First INIinnesota was drawn 
into action against three-fold the number of men in their own ranks 
and they held their ground valiantly until arrangements were made 
for bringing reinforcements to their aid. These men faced certain 
sacrifice and in the course of fifteen minutes eighty-five per cent of 
their number had fallen. 

Likewise we heard, this morning, a description of the struggle and 
strife that followed Pickett's memorable charge; and while these 
horrors of the war are fresh in om' minds we can still take comfort 
in what we saw demonstrated on this battlefield a little more than 
a year ago — that the North and the South are no longer divided, 
but that thev stand closelv united to-dav as one great nation. 

There is much that could be said of this celebrated battle, did time 
permit. To the family of this noble ancestor and the veterans of 
the Army of the Potomac, the least we can say is, rest and peace 
abide with }ou and may heaven's greatest blessing be yours. 



74 




o 

UJ 

(/) 

UJ 

z 
u 
C3 

t- 
< 

I 
I- 
q: 
O 

CO 

Q 
< 

< 

tr 

LiJ 

z 

UJ 

C3 
u. 
O 

UJ 

O 

I 



Benediction bp tbe TRev. ©scar X. Severson, 

137 m. U. Uo[a. 



ALMIGHTY GOD, we thank Thee for the history of patriotism 
written by individuals and patriots on this famous field. May 
the heroic duel fought here be a stimulus to loyalty for 
generations to come. May a kindly Providence deal gently with the 
veterans of the Civil War; and the blessing of God, the Father, the 
Son and the Holy Ghost rest upon and abide with us as a nation 
forever. Amen. 



Xife of General Mabswortb 



3Bp Iboratio C. Iking, %.%. 2)., 

a6v»t.=Col. ■a. S. W., aSrig.=©cn. m. 0. 1R. ; 



Brevet nDalor*(5eneral 3ame0 S. THflabswortb 

TOlrltten anO tlompilcO bg ©en. toratto C. tcing. l.X. D. 



THE name of Wadsworth has been prominent in the State of 
New York, before and since the organization of the United 
States. Prior to and during the Revolution, there were in 
Connecticut three brothers of that name. In the Colonial and Revo- 
lutionary days were Captain Joseph W. Wadsworth, General James 
Wadsworth and Colonel Jeremiah Wadsworth. The first of these, 
in the noted story of the Charter Oak, received the credit of placing 
that famous and invaluable document in the hollow tree immortalised 
by that name. James, the son of James Noyes Wadsworth, carried 
the name from New England to New York. He graduated at Yale 
in 1787. James took charge of lands purchased by Col. Jeremiah 
Wadsworth in the township known as Big Tree. James associated 
his brother William with him and in 1790 undertook the develop- 
ment of a great tract and carried it to success. (This section was 
afterwards known as Geneseo.) 

William was made a Major-General of Militia and was one of 
those who was captured and paroled at the fight and surrender of 
General Scott to the British forces at Queenstown Heights. 

Hard times were followed by a brighter state of things in the 
nineteenth century. Increase of fortune meant increase of land. 
James was broad in character, generous in his conduct and altogether 
a typical American citizen. He was the wealthiest land proprietor 
in the State. 

General James Samuel Wadsworth was the eldest son of five 
children of James and Naomi Wolcott, the latter of East Windsor, 
Connecticut. He was born on October 30, 1807. His early life was 
happy and without eventful circumstance. He was a member of the 
junior and senior classes at Harvard in the Class of 1828, but his 
aversion to hard study prevented his securing a degree. But his 



79 



3amc0 Samuel ^ICla^0wortb 

friends were numerous and important. He read law with Daniel 
Webster and studied for a year at the Yale Law School, and fol- 
lowing this by study in an Albany law office. In 1833 he was ad- 
mitted to the bar but never practiced. His inclination was to home 
and agrarian duties. In 1834 an additional attraction drew him by 
his marriage on May 11, 1834, to Mary Craig ^Vharton, the 
daughter of a Philadelphia Quaker, as Motley wrote, " the most 
beautiful woman in the country, and as agreeable and accomplished 
as beautiful." 

Wadsworth's generosity was very marked. In the famine in 
Ireland in 1847, he donated and sent a shipload of grain and his 
generous gifts of three to five thousand dollars were frequent. 

In the fifteen years following his father's death, he was held in 
the highest pride and affection. In the family and out he was ad- 
mired and beloved, and to quote Motley at the time of his decease, 
" It always seemed to me that he was the truest and the most 
thoroughly loyal American I ever knew and this to me is the highest 
eulogy. I often thought of him and spoke of him as the true original 
tyjie of the American gentleman — not the pale, washed out copy 
of the European aristocrat. The manner in which his character 
expanded in those trying times, from the agreeable and genial man 
of the world, the generous and useful landed proprietor, the frank, 
unaffected, delightful companion into the hero and the patriot has 
always impressed me deeply." 

POLITICS 

Although General Wadsworth's father was a whig, Wadsworth 
himself became a democrat, a supporter of Van Buren and one of 
the group of radicals who opposed the Conservatives or Hunkers. 
His intimate relationship with Van Buren is shown in a vigorous 
letter, which he wrote to the ex-President denouncing the nomination 
of Polk instead of Van Buren. In this occurs a sentence predicative 
of future trouble. He said, " I do not perceive that the dictation 

80 



3ame0 Samuel ^abswortb 

and selfishness of the South were properly rebuked. They have 
filled the Executive Chair forty-four years, the North twelve, and 
yet because we are not prepared to embark in a most unjust and 
iniquitous war to extend their Institutions — meaning thereby 
slavery — our rights are again to be deferred." 

The anti-slavery spirit manifested in this letter from this time 
steadily increased. The concessions demanded from the North, the 
admission of Texas, the Kansas-Nebraska conflict and the Dred Scott 
decision aroused in him and the free-soil democrats active opposition. 
The Wilmot proviso provided a new bond of union. In the Demo- 
cratic State Convention in 1847, the contest became more pronounced. 
Passions rose with the settlement of a strife for contested seats. In 
the heat of it some one spoke of doing justice to Silas Wright, then 
lately deceased. An angry voice responded, " It is too late, he is 
dead." Wadsworth defiantly replied. " Though it may be too late 
to do justice to Silas Wright it is not too late to do justice to his 
assassins." The great national question of slavery caused the break 
and after a failure to have a proviso endorsed, Mr. Wadsworth and 
his associates seceded. The climax was reached a little later at Buffalo 
with other independents and a party was formed taking as its motto 
" Free soil, free speech, free labor and free men." The Democratic 
party was divided and Cass was defeated by losing the State of 
New York. In the Kansas-Nebraska agitation, the refusal that the 
territories should be allowed themselves to settle the question of 
slavery in their borders was a violation of the Missouri Compro- 
mise, and the North was more fully aroused. At Syracuse, in July 
1856, Wadsworth presided at the Convention. Exuressins- regard 
for the party which he was about to leave, he was warmly applauded 
for expressing his allegiance to the principle " one of the corner- 
stones of the Democracy of New York, a stone of Jefferson granite 
— opposition to the extension of slavery." This body then stood 
ready to receive an application to unite with the Republicans and 
appointed a Committee to that end. Then followed the critical con- 
test between James Buchanan and John C. Fremont, the latter being 

81 



3ames Samuel TRUabswortb 

defeated by the loss of the State of Pennsylvania. Space will not 
permit us to dwell upon the pressing incidents which immensely 
increased the force of the Republicans and led to the nomination of 
Lincoln in 1860. The country was surprised at the failure of Seward, 
which was brought about by the division of leading factors in his 
own State. At the State Convention Wadsworth refused to have 
his name presented as a candidate for Governor and for the third 
time he was nominated for Presidental elector. 

The threats of secession, should a Sectional President be elected, 
grew in number and force, and Congress was a hot-bed of political 
disorder. The choice of Lincoln cemented this feeling in the South 
and was succeeded by the official retirement of South Carolina, fol- 
lowed by the other cotton states, which, after Lincoln's election, 
organized the Confederate States of America. 

One of the means to prevent the sundering of the nation was a 
voluntary Peace Conference in AVashington, to provide measures of 
compromise which would satisfy the South and prevent the impend- 
ing War. The effort to provide a constitutional amendment failed. 
The unwillingness of the Southern representatives to make any re- 
bates from their political claims made it apparent that war was the 
only conclusion and they adjourned to prepare for the great emerg- 
ency. The condition of the North and the West particularly was 
quite unsettled, vast nvmibers being against war, while a very great 
part openly expressed their sympathy with the South. Congress was 
unwilling to exert its power, and the greatest doubts filled the press 
and the people until the firing upon Fort Sumter united those North 
of the Mason and Dixon line. These promptly sent its uniformed 
troops to Washington to protect the Nation. At this time Wads- 
worth was fifty-three years old and beyond the required age for 
military duty. 

BULL RUN 

New York was among the very first to take active measures. 
Wadsworth was at once made one of the Executive Committee of 

83 




> 


§ 

a 


-1 

3 


•^ 






T3 


Z 


« 


3 


JS 


a. 






O 


_i 


is 


_i 


•o 


D 


CO 


m 


& 


H 


"rt 


co 


01 


fr 


a 

9 


u. 


a 


^ 


CJ 


UJ 




CO 


-S 


3 


f 


O 


o 


I 


:3 




CO 


> 


^ 


cc 


£ 


z 


^ 



3amcs Samuel '(aIla^swortb 

Thirteen. In tliis capacity he secured the Steamer Kill Van Kull 
and sent a cargo of provisions, clothing, horses and laliorers to 
Annapolis to keep open the railroad to Washington. To this pur- 
pose he gave $17,000. The war ship " Monticello," in anticipation 
of Confederate privateers, acted as escort. He went hy road him- 
self. As soon as he had supervised the distribution, he returned 
to New York. His excellent judgment in all those and similar 
matters led to his appointment bj' Governor Morgan as Major- 
General in the New York troops. This selection was, however, super- 
seded by the requirement of the Secretary of War Cameron that 
all Generals should be designated l)y the President. Wadsworth 
promptly sent in his resignation. 

Determined to be represented in some capacity in a battle soon 
to take place, he applied to General McDowell for appointment as 
aide on his staff. He was ten years older than McDowell, but the 
latter, recognizing his zeal and remarkable activity, quickly accepted 
him. His efficiency was speedily proved by the performance of 
every duty which his office demanded. The false idea then prev- 
alent, that a new man with a new uniform and a new gun, if he 
could get one, was at once a competent soldier, was the popular 
belief. There were no officers, regular or volunteer, who had ever 
commanded more than a thousand men, and indeed, so far as big 
fighting was concerned, every man had to learn his lesson by practical 
experience. Organization of green men is a slow process and the 
Government learned later that six months drill and discipline were 
none too long to make effective soldiers. 

The inane and insane cry of " On to Richmond " forced an un- 
educated Government to direct the advance which precipitated the 
defeat at Bull Run. In this struggle Wadsworth was everywhere 
active. In a charge of the 8th New York against the Henry House 
Hill, the regiment made a wrong turn to the left and subjected itself 
to a flank fire. Major Wadsworth dashed after it, rectified its course, 
accompanied it up the hill and ordered a charge. He exposed him- 
self freely. " Well do I remember," writes an officer of the 13th 

83 



3ame9 Samuel Mabswortb 

New York, " how he came flying down the steep hill by the Old 
Stone House at Bull Run and led the 13th, under a heavy fire from 
the enemy's battery that commanded the hill, into action." 

The battle which favored us in the forenoon was reversed in the 
afternoon by the arrival of Confederate reinforcements, and our Army 
returned to Washington with a most useful and valuable lesson in 
warfare. The Capital was much demoralized and panicky. The 
troops under Colonel (later General) Sherman, acted as a steady 
rear guard and the Confederates made no successful following. The 
North, too, had an interesting lesson and began to think. In his 
official report, General McDowell highlj' complimented Major 
Wadsworth and recommended him for appointment as brigader 
general. 

UPTON'S HILL 

His lack of knowledge and experience in war led Wadsworth to 
decline the New York appointment, but he was urged by his friends 
on JNIcDowell's staff who had admired his skill and courage, and by 
others to take the responsible honor. His commission was dated 
August 9, 1861, and his brigade was composed of the 12th, 21st, 23rd 
and 35th New York Regiments, with headquarters at Arlington. 
Drill and work on the defenses of Washington were the daily duties. 
The presence of an enemy in sight of the National Capital was a 
great annoyance, until General Johnston in September ordered the 
Confederate troops to abandon their advanced position. General 
Wadsworth moved his brigade to Upton's Hill, which he proceeded 
to fortify. The brigade was here strengthened by the arrival of the 
Ulster Guard, with the nmnerical title of the Eightieth New York. 
The highest praise was extended to the General for his great effici- 
ciency in the location, preparation and hygienic properties of his 
brigade, and his thoughtfulness and ready personal generosity were 
everywhere manifest. 

The delay of ^NlcClellan in bringing his army into contact with 
the enemy did not meet with General Wadsworth's approval. It is 

84 



3amcs Samuel Ma^ewortb 

not necessary to dwell upon this here, save to say that the new Com- 
mander was preparing the green Army to make it worthy of Grant's 
encomium in his exjieriences. 

On the relief of General McCIellan from the command of the 
whole army, leaving him the Army of the Potomac only, and the 
withdrawal of McDowell's command, came the appointment of Gen- 
eral Wadsworth to the command of the troops protecting the City 
of Washington. As military governor of that city he was in a posi- 
tion of great delicacy and responsibility. His military inexperience 
was strengthened by the assignment of high military officers. The 
retirement of the Confederate forces came almost simultaneously with 
the appointment. Having followed the enemy to Bull Run, General 
Wadsworth prepared to leave for Washington. The news of this 
loss was reported to the brigade, which manifested its regret in un- 
mistakable terms. For nine months he had been with his troops and 
it would be another nine months before he resumed again its command. 

Foregoing his desire to go with his old brigade in the Burnside 
attack on Fredericksburg, he continued, at the earnest request of the 
Government, in charge of the Civil-military duties of his difficult 
and exacting office. Having no constituency but the nation, he was 
free to carry out the ideas which his own intellectual weight and ex- 
perience suggested. In the midst of this he was called upon to make 
another sacrifice in permitting himself to be named for Governor of 
New York. In a private letter he said, " I do not find any sufficient 
reason for absolutely refusing to accept the nomination for Gov- 
ernor, but I unaffectedly dread it. I have tried to be ordered to 
the field, in which case I should peremptorily decline the nomination, 
but I have not been successful partly because I think the Secretary 
of War wishes me to accept the nomination." 

At the Convention, General Wadsworth received the honor of the 
first ballot. His democratic opponent was Horatio Seymour. Re- 
publican success seemed to be assured. Unfortunately, General 
Wadsworth could not relinquish his office duties to keep up an active 
personal campaign. He was, however, induced to attend a mass 

85 



3amc9 Samuel IHIlaDswortb 

meeting at Cooper Institute a few days before election day. There 
he expressed in most positive terms his abhorrence of slavery and 
alarmed his leaders as to his success. It was in the spirit of his letter 
to an intimate friend and colleague. " We have paid for peace and 
freedom in the blood of our sons; let us have it." His warm and 
unstinted commendation of the Commander-in-Chief Lincoln, evinced 
a thorough understanding of the great leader and justified his state- 
ment, '* I stand by Abraham Lincoln, It is just, it is holy so to do." 
His frank exposition as well as his absence undoubtedly caused.his 
defeat. 

After the election, the Secretary of War was willing to grant 
Wadsworth's desire to return to the field. After a month's leave 
of absence, he was ordered on December 13th to report to General 
Burnside. In his defeat at Fredericksburg he had lost many general 
officers. On December '2'2nd his assignment was made as Commander 
of the First Division of the First Corps. General John F. Reynolds 
conmianded the Corps and he showed in an unusual degree his con- 
fidence and esteem. His first brigade was transferred to the Provost 
IVIarshal and its place was taken by four New Jersey regiments and 
one Pennsylvania, nine-months men whose term of ser\'ice were onl\- 
a few months away. The two other brigades were veteran men. 
enlisted for three years. One included the 19th Indiana. 24th 
^Michigan, and the 2nd. 6th and 7th Wisconsin, kno^^ii as the Iron 
Brigade. The third brigade comprised the 7th Indiana, the 76th and 
9oth Xew York and the j6th Pennsylvania, to which were later added 
the 84th Xew York (14th Brooklyn) and the 147th Xew York, and 
Battery B. 4th United States Artillery. The position of this force 
for the winter was at Belle Plain, Potomac Creek, near where it 
empties into the Potomac River. 

CHANCELLOR S VILLE 

In April, 1863. the weather and condition of the ground afforded 
the opportunity for a grand movement on the part of the Army. 
On April 27 four army corps began the march. On the 28th the 

86 




< 

- 

q: n 
O »i 

CO 5 



> 

CO 

IT 

o 



U 

o 
z 
< 

I 
o 



3ames Samuel MaDswortb 

First Corps made ready to go, but was delayed by a mutinous refusal 
of a few companies in a New York regiment, on the ground that their 
term of two years' enhstment had expired. His division, save the 
Iron Brigade, was ordered to march. With this. General Wadsworth 
took place in front of the offenders and directed it to load and come 
to a " ready." He then rode close to them and said " Men of New 
York, of good deeds, I give you the alternative. New York is ashamed 
of your conduct, I am astonished. Take two steps to the front as 
your willingness to obey the command to march; unless you do, by 
the Almighty, I'll bury you here." The men promptly stepped two 
paces forward, the Iron Brigade recovered arms, the band played 
" Johnny comes marching home " and the affair was over. 

Hooker's, the commander's, expectation that Lee would be driven 
from Fredericksburg and forced to retreat to Richmond was wisely 
planned and ineffectively carried out. Wadsworth's Division was a 
part of the strategy and with three corps under Sedgwick crossed the 
river three miles below the City. For three days this large force 
refrained from an attack upon what proved to be only ten thousand 
men. The arrangements to get orders from General Hooker were 
unsatisfactory. On May 2nd came the instructions to march to 
Chancellorsville. The Confederate forces delayed, with considerable 
loss, the recrossing of the river. The long march of twenty-two miles 
on this hot Saturday had only reached as far as United States Ford. 
The battle of May 3 was on. Wadsworth's Division was to form a 
second line behind Hunting Creek. There they heard Hooker's guns 
but were practically of no avail. Exhausted, they slept. " We are 
humiliated at our defeat," writes Wadsworth, " Hooker has lost the 
confidence of the Army by his conduct of this movement." 

The activity of Lee's army, inflated by this victory, indicated a 
most important movement and in June began the advance to Pennsyl- 
vania. The division had been reduced by the muster out of the New 
Jersey Brigade of nine-months men and the eight thousand had been 
cut down to four thousand, the Iron Brigade and Cutler's Brigade, 
than which none better could be found in the Army. On June 12th 

87 



James Samuel XCla^swortb 

the corps broke camp. Together with the 3rd and 11th Corps it 
formed the right wing of the Army. On June 25th, it was directed 
to push with speed and lay hold of the passes in South Mountain. 
The relief of Hooker was a disappointment, but still greater that 
Reynolds was not made his successor. It is related that Reynolds 
was at one time actually offered the honor which he would accept only 
on condition that he should have absolute control of the Army and 
its operations. But the Armj' battle was still to be fought by the 
inefficient in the War Department. 

On June 28th the Corps fell back to Frederick and on the next 
day marched twenty-three miles to Emmitsburg. On June 30th, they 
made a march of five miles to Marsh Creek and there awaited orders. 

GETTYSBURG 

On July 1st, the Division moved towards Gettysburg at the head 
of the Corps. The indication of a concentration of the Confederate 
forces was expected and Buford's Cavalry, which was in the advance, 
would need support. Ai'rived within a mile of the town, an aide 
from General Buford encountered them with the information that 
the enemy was approaching rapidly. General Reynolds and Wads- 
worth consulted and concluded to meet the attack about a mile from 
Gettysburg, on elevated ground. To the First Corps was given the 
honor and prestige of the first crushing conflict in what should have 
been the last battle of the war. Defeat here meant, probablj', foreign 
recognition of the Confederate Government and what at best would 
have been a peace and postponement for a few years of a similar 
and final struggle. It is not purposed here to give a detailed account 
of the three days' contest which ended on the -Ith of July by the 
retreat of the Confederate troops. 

One of the features of the opening battle was a deep railroad 
excavation or cut on an unfinished railway, where brilliant work was 
done by our men. Wadsworth took his division to relieve Buford, 
who had been compelled to withdraw to the McPherson Woods. The 
superior force of the enemy secured Wadsworth's repulse and they 

88 




I- 

< 

u 

I 
I- 

o 

CO 

o 

z 

o 
o 



< 

o 

a: 

o 

IT 

CQ 
CO 

ce 

LLl 
CO 

< 

I 
O 




2 
> 



O 



< 

CD 
C 
31 
P 

CO 

I 

o 

z 
o 

■D 

o 

en 



O 

z 



> 

o 

en 

o 

H 
I 
cn 
□ 
< 
CO 

o 



c 
r 



3ame0 Samuel TRUabsvportb 

retreated. Wadsworth's position then was at tlie edge of the woods 
on Seminary Ridge. The order to retreat had not reached the One 
hundred and forty-seventh New York and an aide was despatched to 
notify it. Al)out the same time came the stunning news that Reynolds 
had heen killed. Wadsworth was under the impression that he, as 
Senior Officer, was in command and gave some orders. But General 
Doubleday, who was at the other end of the field, had arrived and 
seized the situation. Fighting his men against a very much larger 
force called for the greatest skill and courage, ^^liat threatened to 
be a defeat was converted into a temporary success by the capture of 
part of Davis's and Archer's Confederate Brigades and a lull in the 
attack. Encouraged by this, Doubleday decided to continue the con- 
test. Dawes, of the Sixth Wisconsin, speaking of Wadsworth, wrote, 
" The activity, efficiency and, if I may so express it, the ubiquity of 
General James S. Wadsworth in the battle was remarkable. He was 
of remarkable and commanding appearance, and was absolutely 
fearless in exposing himself to danger." 

Soon General Howard came up with the 11th Corps and the 
command of the entire force fell upon him. He directed Wadsworth 
to hold the ridge as long as possible. An attack from the north was 
handsomely repulsed. Some of the most desperate fighting of the 
war was made between infantry and artillery without a particle of 
cover on either side. By four o'clock, it was evident that our forces 
were greatly inadequate. Wadsworth received an order from Double- 
day to retreat to Cemetery Hill. He was engaged in sighting one 
of Davidson's twelve pounders and replied, " Tell General Doubleday 
that I don't know an}i;hing about strategj-, but we are giving the 
Rebels hell with these guns and I want to give them a few more shots 
before we leave." The converging Confederates compelled a with- 
drawal to a new position and the whole force fell back to Cemetery 
Hill, the final line of battle for that engagement. The sacrifice of 
the First Corps cannot be over appreciated. It conveyed the impres- 
sion to Lee that he was attacking all of the Army of the Potomac 
and doubtless prevented him from following the retreat that nio-ht 

89 



3ame0 Samuel Wlabswortb 

to Cemetery Hill. This State still owes monuments to Generals 
Doubleday and Robinson of New York, for their heroic service here 
and throughout the war. 

The arrival of Hancock made him chief for a time and he assumed 
command. Wadsworth's Division was sent to Gulp's Hill in support 
of Steven's Battery, anticipating an attack in that quarter. This 
occurred on the following day and was repulsed. General AVads- 
worth's request to have his division put in at the time of Pickett's 
charge was declined, as Pickett had been driven back at the time 
of its receipt. 

The discussion as to the failure of Meade to attack on the fourth 
day need not be revived here. McClellan pursued the same course 
at Antietam. After such desperate battles and slaughter, the soldier's 
inclination is to let well enough alone. But whatever might have 
been accomplished by an advance, it is certain that the capture of the 
whole Confederate Army then would not have accomplished the in- 
evitable result of the war, the destruction of slavery. 

On July 6, Wadsworth's Division started south and an early 
resumption of the struggle was looked for. At a council of war, near 
Falling Waters, Maryland, a majority opposed an attack. Wads- 
worth, who represented Newton, in his absence, urged a renewal of 
the struggle, but not being a corps commander, had no vote. Meade, 
however, concluded to force the fighting, but on July 14, when our 
troops moved forward, they found the Confederate pickets withdrawn 
and Lee's Army, by aid of a pontoon bridge and a falling river, had 
crossed the Potomac into Virginia, to return no more to Northern 
soil. 

Wadsworth, greatly disappointed, and " Out of conceit with war " 
and with a division reduced to the size of a brigade, asked to be re- 
lieved. His request was granted and he started at once for Wash- 
ington. 

TEMPORARY DUTY 

His retvu-n did not mean a period of rest. It was during the 
time of the enlistment of negroes as soldiers. He was assigned to 

90 



3ame6 Samuel Mabswortb 

the Mississippi Valley to examine and report upon the condition of 
the colored troops and of the non-military part of the colored people. 
He inspected troops at Cairo and then proceeded to Natchez, Port 
Hudson, Baton Rouge and New Orleans. On December 3 he was 
back again in Washington. 

In January he was ordered on a Court of Inquiry to investigate 
the conduct of Generals McCook, Crittenden and Negley at Chicka- 
mauga. This took him to Nashville and Louisville. The Court com- 
pletely exonerated the three officers. 

During the long sessions of the Court, Congress revived the 
rank of Lieutenant-General and on March 10th Grant was appointed 
and assigned to the command of the entire Army. Stanton and Hal- 
leck were retired to civil work and Grant was permitted by President 
Lincoln to try his hand. The relief of Halleck from command of 
the army was effected and the Constitutional Commander-in-Chief 
wisely left it to the generals in the field to do the planning and the 
fighting. It was a resumption of the Anaconda plan to keep all the 
armies fighting at the same time and the crushing of the Confederates 
towards Richmond and ultimate surrender. 

Grant chose the Army of the Potomac as his headquarters and 
with Meade as his immediate assistant, began the preparations for 
the final struggle. This new plan revived all of Wadsworth's ardor 
for battle in the field. The splendid record he had made was his 
sufficient endorsement. Grant said of him later, " One fighter such as 
he was worth a whole brigade." On March 1.5, he was directed to 
report to General Meade who, ten days thereafter, assigned him to 
the Fifth Corps commanded by General G. K. Warren. 

It was in the memorable march by the left fiank to Richmond 
that the generous, devoted and efficient Wadsworth was to give his 
life for his country. In the first great engagement in the Wilder- 
ness, he was mortally wounded while leading his troops. The details 
of this movement, of the conflict and of his death have been graphically 
and eloquently described in the recently published Life of Wadsworth, 
by Henry Greenleaf Pearson, Charles Scribner's Sons, Publishers. 

91 



3ames Samuel TRIlabswortb 

To this work we are mainly indebted in the comijilation of this sketch. 
It seems best that in continuation and closing of tliis recital that 
account should be generously used. It is with the author's permission 
that I present here the last chapter of his fine work, with such elimina- 
tions only as do not mar the force or interest of the story. It is a 
tribute to the remarkable character of one who in civil and military 
hfe manifested at all times the qualities of a public spirited, high 
minded, generous, patriotic Christian gentleman. The name of 
General James S. Wadsworth will never be forgotten by the people 
he served. 

THE WILDERNESS 

The region of the Wilderness, into and through which Grant was 
moving his army and which was destined presently to be the scene 
of a contest the like of which had not occurred since Hermann 
destroyed the Roman legions in the forest of Teutoberg, lies immedi- 
ately south of the Rapidan, between Chancellorsville and Mine Run. 
an area some twelve miles across from east to west and ten or twelve 
from north to south. It was covered, then as now, by a dense second 
growth of scrubby trees, the primeval forests having been cut down 
to feed the furnaces connected with the mines that Alexander Spotts- 
wood. Governor of Virginia in the early years of the eighteenth 
century, had opened throughout the region. " Thickets of stunted 
pine, sweet-gum, scrub oak, and cedar, a jungle of switch * * * 
ten or twenty feet high," are some of the phrases which have been 
used to characterize this gro\vi;h ; and Milton's " brush with frizzled 
hair implicit " describes the tangle of vmderbrush with which the floor 
of the forest was encmiibered. 

Through the midst of the forest run the Orange Turnpike and 
the Orange Plank Road, forming the main lines of travel between 
Fredericksburg on the east and Orange Court House on the west. 
Wliere these are connected by the Brock Road, a north and south 
cross-road, they are a mile and a half apart; a little farther west 




o 

if) J 

> i 

H -3 

I- », 

UJ o 

J. 

> -s 

cr o 

< -5 
z ^ 

LLl c: 

CO 5 

Z - 

< i 

(T ~ 

LU J 

1 S 



3amc9 Samuel Mabewortb 

the distance between them is nearly twice as great. Another cross- 
road, the Gernianna Plank Road, forms the other leg of a letter X 
between the two east and west roads, and, extending to the north- 
west for five miles, crosses the Rapidan at Germanna Ford. 

Besides these main roads there is in the forest a maze of cart 
tracks and cow-paths, threading its ravines and winding around its 
swamps, in which seep the waters of nmnerous streams. Here and 
there are clearings, the most considerable of them, that at Wilderness 
Tavern in the heart of the forest, being a mile across in either direc- 
tion. Through this clearing runs the straight and narrow pike, and 
where it dips down over rolling slopes to cross Wilderness Run the 
Germanna Ford Road comes in from the northwest. Other clearings 
are the Widow Tapp's field and that at Parker's Store on the Orange 
Plank Road, and, lying between them and the pike in the direction 
of the tavern, the high ground of Chewning's Farm. Over this high 
ground and then down the little valley through which flows Wilder- 
ness Run lies a wood road connecting Parker's Store and Wilderness 
Tavern. 

South of the Rapidan and west of the Wilderness beyond Mine 
Run lay Lee's army. His headquarters were at Orange Court House 
some twenty miles from the Wilderness Tavern, and Longstreet's 
Corps was still farther away to the southwest at Gordonsville and 
JNIechanicsburg. The movement around Lee's right flank upon which 
Grant had determined as the first step in the campaign of 1864, 
though more promising than a movement round the left flank, had 
nevertheless this disadvantage, that the army nmst first traverse the 
region of the Wilderness. Since the long train of four thousand 
wagons was bound in the exigencies of its progress to make the Fed- 
eral advance slow, there was danger lest Lee, catching wind of his 
opponent's course, should choose to throw his army across Grant's 
j)ath by the two roads from the Orange Court House. The Army of 
the Potomac, therefore, at the same time that it was pushing south 
toward the open country beyond Parker's Store, must be so disposed 



3amc0 Samuel THIla&0wortb 

that it could in short notice face to the west to meet Lee. The cal- 
culation of time, based on the Mine Run campaign over the same 
ground in the preceding November, justified belief that, in the words 
of Major-General Humphreys, who prepared the details of the move- 
ment, the Army of the Potomac " might move so far beyond the 
Rajjidan the first day that it would be able to pass out of the Wilder- 
ness and turn, or partly turn, the right flank of Lee before a general 
engagement took place." In other words. Grant might hope on the 
second day of his march to get to Parker's Store and beyond before 
Lee advanced within striking distance on the Pike and the Plank 
Road. " I do not perceive," says General Humphreys, who from his 
position as chief of staff of the Army of the Potomac speaks with 
an authority that cannot be gainsaid, " that there is anything to induce 
the belief that General Grant intended or wished to fiffht a battle 
in the Wilderness." But Lee, acting on that jjrecept in Napoleon's 
Maxims of War, " never to do what the enemy wishes you to do, for 
this reason alone, that he desires it," here, as at other times during the 
war, disappointed the calculations of his antagonists through the 
failure of the Federal cavalrv to remain on the Pike accordinsr to 
Meade's orders, Ewell's swift approach along that road was unknown 
to Grant, who was thus left too long in fancied security. So the 
battle was brought on in the middle of the forest, wliere Lee's men 
were much more at home than were Grant's, where the disjjarity 
between his 61,000 and Grant's 115,000 effectives was minimized, 
and where the superiority of the Federal artillery counted for 
nothing. 

A battle fought on these terms is one of " brigades and regiments 
rather than of corps and divisions," if, indeed, it is not even better 
characterized in the words of Colonel Theodore Lyman, volunteer 
aide-de-camp on Meade's staff, as a " scientific bushwhack of 200,000 
men." Obviously, in such a contest skill in the art of war counts 
for less than individual resourcefulness and courage. That courage, 
too, must be of the kind which can put down sudden fear springing 

94 



3ame9 Samuel IaIla^9wortb 

from unknown causes. One of the officers of the Twentieth Massa- 
chusetts told Lyman that, tliough his regiment lost one-fourth of its 
men, he never saw an enemy. There is nothing strange, then, in the 
statement of Colonel Swan that " in all this wood fighting our troops 
seemed to have been greatly alarmed whenever the noise of a contest 
to the right or the left told them that there was fighting in the rear 
of a prolongation of their own lines. Such noises seem to have caused 
more disturbance than a foe directly in front." 

Officers, too, as well as men, felt the spell of the Wilderness and 
were not at their best. " These generals," says Colonel Thomas L. 
Livermore, in speaking of the beginning of the battle, " who hesitated 
to attack were brave and skilful soldiers, but some strange lethargy 
seems to have possessed them." But these mysteries of the woodland, 
Avhatever their effect on others, proved to have no terrors for Wads- 
worth. The necessity of attacking an unseen antagonist with troops 
which for the most part he could not see in nowise daunted him, 
and his valor was as stubborn here as on the open fields of Gettys- 
burg. 

In the march which began at midnight of the night of IVIay 3-4, 
Warren's Corps was ordered to proceed from Culpeper to Germanna 
Ford, and, having crossed the Rapidan, to go on to the Wilderness 
Tavern, in the open ground about which it was to encamp for the 
night. Of Warren's four divisions, Wadsworth's, the next to the 
largest, marched third. 

Through the darkness of the early dawn, along the roads leading 
to the chosen fords of the river, " could be heard the hum of moving 
troops and the peculiar rattle of cup and canteen which is heard only 
in war." When the sun rose with the promise of a warm day every 
height of land over which the troops took their way gave them 
glimpses of the vast movement of which they were a part. All the 
roads were marked by columns of infantry, by wagon trains and 
artillery ; flags dipped and the sunlight sparkled on the flanks of the 
brass Napoleons. 'Now and again was heard the sound of distant 
cheering. Thrilled by the hope of victory which the beginning of the 

95 



3ame0 Samuel TKHa^swortb 

campaign held out to the army, officers and men were responsive to 
the signs of spring everywhere about them, and Theodore Lyman 
was not the only soldier who noted that " beyond Stevensburg the 
roadside was full of violets, and the little leaves of the wood trees 
were just beginning to unfold, the size of a mouse's ear, perhaps." 

By the middle of the morning Wadsworth's Division had reached 
Germanna Ford on the Rapidan and had begun crossing on the pon- 
toon bridges. On the high ground above the south bank were the 
headquarters colors of Grant, of Meade, and of Warren, and the 
young officers of their staffs exchanged friendly greetings with their 
comrades in the marching columns. Leaving this brilliant group 
behind them, the sign of the unity of that huge organization to which 
it was their pride to belong, Wadsworth's men struck into the Wilder- 
ness after the two leading divisions of the Fifth Corps. 

Though the distance from the ford to the tavern was less than 
five miles, the monotonj' of the forest was broken only once or twice 
by a clearing and a couple of old houses, and the distance seemed 
interminable. Tokens of the heat and fatigue of the day appeared 
in the discarded overcoats with which the roadsides were strewn. 
Arrived at last at the tavern, Wadsworth was ordered to encamp his 
division east of Wilderness Run, the divisions ahead of him being 
one (Griffin's) to the west on the Pike and the other (Crawford's) 
to the southwest about the Lacy House, ready to take up the march 
to Parker's Store the next morning. And here, ringed about by the 
Wilderness, one of Wadsworth's regiments was brought face to face 
with reminders of last year's battle, of " Stonewall " Jackson's over- 
whelming attack upon the unguarded Federal flank, and of his mortal 
wound received in the moment of victory. The Second Wisconsin 
had been sent on picket duty in the direction of Chancellorsville, and 
its adjutant, G. M. Woodward, of La Crosse, Wisconsin, says that 
where he established the line of pickets the ground here and there 
blazed with wild azaleas, and at first presented no evidence that it 
had ever been the scene of battle; dismounting, he soon found 
scattered in every direction the debris of war — knapsacks, belts, 

96 



3amc0 Samuel Ma^avportb 

bayonets, scabbards, etc. Farther on he saw what appeared to be 
a long trench about eight feet wide, filled up and mounded, its edges 
sunken and covered with grass, weeds and wild flowers. This picket 
line ran undoubtedly through " Stonewall " Jackson's field hospital 
of just a year before, to which he was carried when wounded " 

Meade's orders for the next day, May 5, required Warren, start- 
ing at five o'clock, to take his corps by the wood road to Parker's 
Store, and having reached it, to extend his right to Sedgwick, who 
was to move up to take the position that Warren had held on the 
Pike. Hancock, making a long sweep from Chancellorsville was 
to take position on Warren's left and to extend his right to connect 
with Warren. This having been done, the armv was to be " held 
ready to move forward." Flankers and pickets were to be thrown 
well out and all the troops " held ready to meet the enemy at any 
moment." ^ 

The belief on which these orders were based, that Lee's army was 
far enough away to the west for this " preliminary position " to be 
taken on the morning of May 5, was destined not to survive many 
hours of daylight. On the night of May 4 the head of EweU's Corps 
had encamped on the Pike only five miles from Wilderness Tavern 
while the head of Hill's Corps on the Plank Road was within three or 
four miles of Parker's Store. The two columns which Lee was 
sending to strike athwart the Federal line of march were thus close 
at hand. 

The proximity of Ewell on the Pike was discovered early on the 
morning of May 5 by the outposts of Griffin's Division. Warren 
though sceptical as to the gravity of the situation, told Griffin to get 
ready to attack at once. Meade, hurrying up, ordered Warren to 
suspend his march and to attack straightway with his whole force 
saymg, " If there is to be any fighting this side of Mine Run, let us 
do It right ofi-." Finally, Grant, when communicated with, ordered 
an immediate attack; taken by surprise though he was, he proposed 
to lose not an hour in striking at Lee, whether he had to encounter 
a whole corps or only a rear-guard. 



97 



3ames Samuel Mabswortb 

At five o'clock Crawford's Division of Warren's Corps had started 
from about the Lacy house, followed by Wadsworth's; they were 
making good progress toward Parker's Store when they suddenly 
heard the sound of skirmishing in the direction of IMine Run. Soon 
an aide hurried up to Wadsworth with orders from Warren dispatched 
at 7.30: "The movement towards Parker's Store is suspended for 
the moment. You will halt, face towards Mine Run, and make your 
connection with General Griffin on your right." Presently Warren 
himself, accompanied by Lieutenant Schaff, rode up. " Find out 
what is in there," he said, pointing to the woods toward the west. 

Taking the two batteries (Breck's First New York and Stewart's 
Fourth United States) that were with the division, and the leading 
brigade, Rice's, and sending orders to Stone and Cutler, AVadsworth 
started in the direction indicated by Warren. The batteries followed 
up a road which had evidently been used for bringing out charcoal 
and which was now grown up with small brush and full of stumps and 
rotten logs. A journey through the woods of perhaps a quarter of a 
mile brought them out on a narraw clearing less than a half mile 
long, where were situated the buildings of INIiss Hagerson's farm. 
Wadsworth halted the batteries at the eastern edge of the clearing 
and directed Stewart, who will be remembered for the execution he 
did on Scale's Brigade at Gettysburg, to command them both. Xo 
task could please the daring Scotchman better than to manage guns 
in such a remote and hazardous position. The brigade Wadsworth 
formed in the clearing. At 8.30, less than an hour after receiving 
Warren's order, he explained to Griffin, commanding the division 
on his right, the disposition of his own 6,500 effectives as follows: 
" I find an opening and tolerable position for artillery about one 
and one-half miles from Lacey's house. I am at that point Avith two 
batteries and one brigade (Rice). Have a brigade (Stone) stretched 
thinly through a piece of very thick woods and one brigade (Cutler's) 
near you." The left of his line was supported by the Maryland 
Brigade of Robinson's Division. 

98 



3ames Samuel Mat)swortb 

In this position, although by his connection with Griffin, Wads- 
worth was well i:)rotected on the right, he was not so fortunate in 
respect to his other flank. Crawford, by reason of exigencies pres- 
entlj' to be noted, told of only part of a brigade (McCandless's) to 
join hands with Wadsworth, and then only after so much delay that 
it was of no use. Moreover, Rice's Brigade, formed along the length 
of the Hagerson farm and facing northwest, had its unprotected left 
flank even advanced toward the enemy. 

No advantage, however, was to be gained from Wadsworth's 
prompt preparations, though a brisk attack was precisely the thing 
desired by Grant and jNIeade. In his message sent at 8 :24 in response 
to the notification of Ewell's advance, Grant had said: " If any 
opportunitj' presents itself for pitching into a part of Lee's army, do 
so without giving time for disposition." The faithful execution of 
this, the new conmiander's first fighting order to the Army of the 
Potomac, was the primary essential to the success of the Union Arms, 
yet the battle did not begin till well beyond the hour of noon. 

Meanwhile, Wadsworth's troops, having thrown up slight in- 
trenchments, were lying at their ease in the woods, full of the cheer 
of the warm spring morning. The officers of the Sixth Wisconsin, in 
the second line of the Iron Brigade, lounged under a gi-eat oak tree, 
chaffing one another as if it were the noon hour of a day's hunting- 
expedition. 

At a little before one o'clock the attack began. The orders were 
to advance due west by the compass, a command impossible of execu- 
tion even if there had been a compass for every man of them. Schaff"s 
account gives a vivid picture of the kind of thing that happened. 

" The troops tried at first to advance in line of battle from the 
temporary works which had been thrown up while the reconnoissances 
and preparations were going on; but owing to the character of the 
woods they soon found that was out of the question, and had to 
break by battalions and wings into columns of fours. So by the 
time they neared the enemy all semblance of line of battle was gone and 

99 



3ame0 Samuel IRfla^sworlb 

there were gaps everywhere between regiments and brigades. Regi- 
ments that had started in the second Kne facing west found themselves 
facing north, deploying ahead of the first line. As an example of 
the confusion, the Sixth Wisconsin had been formed behind the 
Seventh Indiana, with orders to follow it at a distance of one hundred 
yards. By running ahead of his regiment the colonel of the Sixth 
managed to keep the Seventh in sight till they were close to the front ; 
but when the firing began the Seventh set out at double-quick for the 
enemy and disappeared in a moment, and the next thing was an out- 
burst of musketry and the enemy were coming in front and march- 
ing by both flanks." 

Under these difficult circumstances, it was the Iron Brigade with 
its western woodsmen that made the best progress. At the moment 
of contact with the enemy they were in advance of the rest of the 
division on their left and of the nearest brigade (Bartlett's) of 
Griffin's Division on their right. They pushed forward with cheers, 
and the force opposed to them (Jones's Brigade of Johnson's Divi- 
sion) gave way. So great was their impetus that with the hel^) of Bart- 
lett's Brigade they broke the brigades (Battle's and Doles's of Rodes's 
Division) in the Confederate second line. Three flags and two hun- 
dred and eighty-nine prisoners Cutler reported as their prize. But 
this advance was an isolated one. Griffin's men on the other side of 
the Pike found that the line opposite them overlajiped theirs consider- 
ablj' on the right, and soon the flank fire from its extreme regiments 
drove them back in confusion. Bartlett and Cutler were presently 
assailed by troops from Earl's Division, which forming hurriedly and 
coming on with a wild yell, broke them up and forced them back. 
Cutler's people did not stop till they reached the oj^en ground of the 
Lacy plantation; but for all that they were not too demoralized to 
bring their prisoners with them. 

In Wadsworth's centre, meanwhile, some of Stone's regiments had 
encountered a swamp. Impeded and bewildered in the attempt to 
accomplish its passage, they were completely unnerved l)y the dis- 
charges of musketry about them. Indeed, it is altogether probable 

100 




UJ 

CD 
Q 



> 

< 

z 



CO 



CO M 

O - 

O -"■ 

5 5 



z 
o 

CO 

q: 

LU 

I 

Q. 



Q 
Z 
< 

H 

O 

Q 
< 

O 



< 



3amc0 Samuel Ma^swortb 

that they and Rice's men fired into each other. At all events, the 
men nearest to Rice, occupied in extricating themselves each from 
his own mud-hole or briery tangle, made no resistance worth mention- 
ing. 

As for Rice's Brigade, its misfortunes had begun earlier in the 
morning, when four whole companies and parts of two others sent 
out as skirmishers had been captured. Now, as it advanced through a 
piece of woods particularly dense, its left s^vung round toward the 
Pike. W]\en presently it was checked by the fire of an unseen foe, 
the discovery that the enemy's line overlapped that flank for a con- 
siderable distance threw it into complete confusion. As the reo-i- 
ments, disorganized by the flank attack, poured back into the Hager- 
son clearing, their assailants, Daniel's Brigade of Rodes's Division, 
coming close behind them, Stewart recognized the opportunity for 
which he had been waiting. Realizing that he might be called upon 
to get out of a tight place in a hurry, he had already sent back toward 
the Lacy plantation the other battery and the caissons of both, 
and now with his guns " at fixed prolonge," ready to move without 
a second's delay, he was in a position to prevent the Confederates 
from crossing the field. ^\Tien the canister which he gave them in 
good measure had driven them back to the shelter of the woods, he 
withdrew his battery as rapidly as the holes and stumps in the wood 
road permitted. 

This encounter between Warren and Ewell, which, beginning at 
12.50, lasted for about an hour and a half, resulted in the repulse 
of all the Federal troops engaged. Not only was Grant's plan of 
a sudden sharp blow at Lee while he was unprepared frustrated, but 
the Federal troops had shown themselves less able than the Con- 
federates to cope with the difliculties of forest fighting and more 
subject to its terrors. The prestige of victory in the first meeting 
of the two great antagonists was with Lee. In truth, if Warren's 
men had been pursued, their punishment would unquestionablv have 
been severer. For this immunity Grant had to thank the restraining 

101 



3ames Samuel llClat)9wortb 

orders of Lee, who was unwilling to risk more until Longstreet 
had joined him. 

The part taken by Wadsworth himself in the engagement is hard 
to define. His brigades, stretched out through the woods, were as 
completely beyond his control as they were beyond his sight, and 
the stunted pines with their spreading branches practically prohibited 
communication by mounted aides. Wadsworth's presence, therefore, 
was of avail only with the troops of Rice's Brigade in the Hagerson 
clearing. Shut off from knowledge of Cutler's success at first, he was 
cognizant only of the feeble resistance of Stone's regiments to the 
advance of the Confederates on the right flank of Rice's Brigade and 
then of the disaster on the other flank. With affairs going in this 
fashion there was nothing for Wadsworth to do but to order a re- 
treat before he was entirely cut off. This was disconcerting enough, 
but he became still more wrought up when, on getting back to the 
fields about the Lacy house, he found men of all his brigades emerging 
in more or less confusion from the woods to the west. Once in the 
open, to be sure, they halted; they had got their bearings and, more 
than that, could realize that they were not being pursued. Though 
the reforming of the regiments was now an easy matter, his vexation 
at their unaccountable behavior increased, if anything, as he dashed 
hither and thither. That the men who had endured so steadily all 
the long day at Gettysburg should now give way on such short pro- 
vocation was a possibility for which he was totallj' unprepared. At 
the moment his philosophy could not compass it, and the chagrin of 
the failure overcame him completelj\ 

Wadsworth was not the only officer whose temper, severely 
strained during the long anxious morning, first by the baffling contest 
with nature and then by the contest with men whom nature seemed 
to be aiding, now gave way. At the Lacy house, where Warren was, 
and at Grant's and Meade's headquarters on the other side of the 
Pike, many hard words were exchanged. Griffin came storming in, 
so angry that he had been ordered to attack before the Sixth Corps 
had got into position on his right that his language seemed to Rawlins, 

103 



3ames Samuel Mat)6wortb 

Grant's chief of staff, sufficient cause for his arrest. The loss of 
two guns, which had been advanced along the Pike, was the occasion 
of much recriminating language. Crawford reported nearly a whole 
regiment captured. Warren was conscious that the burden of his 
defeat would not be eased for him by his superiors. The blame that 
was in the heart of every one flowed from the tongue unchecked. 

Though the work along Warren's line was now done for the day 
another battle on the Plank Road to the south was about to begin; 
and as Wadsworth's fighting spirit was soon to take him thither it is 
necessary to explain the situation there. Hill's column, led here as 
at Gettysburg by Heth's Division, though delayed somewhat by the 
Federal Cavalry on the Plank Road, had during the forenoon been 
advancing steadily towards its all-important goal, the point where that 
road was crossed by the Brock Road. The division behind Heth, 
Wilcox's, was to protect Hill's left flank by connecting with Ewell's 
right at the Hagerson farm. 

]Meade, meanwhile, realizing that if Hill seized the Brock Road, 
Hancock's Corps to the south at Todd's Tavern would be cut off, 
had hurried to the crossing from the Wilderness clearing Getty's 
Division (three brigades) of Sedgwick's Corps, and had ordered 
Hancock back to the same spot. Getty reached the place in the nick 
of time, at about noon, and Hancock's men began to arrive at two 
o'clock. It was in defense of the line of the Brock Road that the 
severe fighting of the remaining thirty hours of the battle of the 
Wilderness took place. Severe, indeed, it was beyond almost any- 
thing that either armj' had hitherto known. " There are but one or 
two square miles upon this continent," remarks Colonel Swan, " that 
have been more saturated with blood than was the square mile which 
lay in front of the Brock Road and had the Orange Plank Road as 
a central avenue, in the two days of the battle of the Wilderness. 
* * * Nearly every square yard had its fill of blood, and on nearly 
every square yard was Northern and Southern blood intermingled." 

This crossroads is perhaps the most desolate spot in all the desola- 
tion of the forest. The brick-red roads are narrow and run at right 

103 



3amc0 Samuel Mat)Swortb 

angles to each other. The jungle comes up close on either side and 
the traveller can see into it for a distance of barely twenty feet. In 
the sjjace north of the Plank Road and west of the Brock Road, the 
presence of swamps and runs adds to the difficulty of the ground. 
There is no clearing for a mile in any direction. 

Wadsworth, as has been said, soon reformed his men and stationed 
them on the high ground in front of the Lacy house, facing toward 
the Plank Road. Here Grant and JNIeade found him when during 
the afternoon they came over to inspect Warren's position. Grant 
was anxious to know whether it would not be possible to send a force 
straight through the woods to strike Hill in the left flank and rear 
at the same time that Getty and Hancock assailed him in front, 
and Wadsworth's reply was the instant request that the task be 
given to him. The bad conduct of part of his command was still 
rankling within him and he felt as if his own honor were stained; 
moreover, his men were at hand and well rested and no less eager 
than he to retrieve before nightfall the disasters of the morning. As 
the commanding general listened to this energetic plea and got a 
glimpse of the white-haired soldier's instinct for taking a hand 
wherever there was a chance to do anj"- fighting, he had an opportunity 
to revise his opinion concerning the slowness of Warren's generals. 
Robinson, too, commanding the Second Division of the Fifth Corps, 
asked to have a part in the movement, and when his second brig- 
ade, Baxter's, was added by Grant to Wadsworth's command, accom- 
panied it. 

And yet from this undertaking, as from the morning's attack, 
the advantage of prompt movement was to be withheld. ^Miere the 
blame lies cannot be now ascertained, but for an hour after the troops 
were ready they waited for marching orders. At a quarter past four 
the sound of Getty's and Hancock's attack, late in beginning from 
causes similar to those that had delayed the morning attack on the 
Pike, was borne from the direction of the cross-roads, and as the 
sun sank lower the chances of getting through a mile and a half of 
dense woods in time to strike Hill's flank grew less and less. At five 

104 



3ame9 Samuel MaDewortb 

o'clock report was made to Warren of a movement of Confederate 
troops from Chewning's toward Heth, and the order to Wadsworth 
to go in was either consequent ujjon this or else coincident with it. 

The task which Wadsworth had undertaken was one to test to 
the uttermost the nerve of a leader. The difficulties of advancing in 
line through forest swamps and ravines, the spell of forehoding that 
woods at dusk always weave about every heart, told upon the firmness 
of the men, and all the while, in the expressive phrase of one regi- 
mental historian, " the whole Wilderness roared like fire in a cane- 
brake." It is not strange that when the enemy's skirmish line — 
Wilcox's men of Hill's Corj^s placed across their path barely ten 
minutes before — fired upon them, one brigade, terror-stricken, 
became utterly demoralized. The men " broke in a disgraceful 
manner," so says one report in the official records, " on seeing the 
fire of Baxter's skirmishers in front of them. They were stopped, 
however, by the exertions of their own officei's and Cutler's bayonets 
behind them." 

The firing thus begun spread from one regiment to another, and 
soon in Wadsworth's command there was a veritable riot of musketry. 
Volley after volley was discharged, sometimes at the retreating- 
skirmish line, sometimes at stray commands wandering about hope- 
lessly lost, some at no enemy at all. So tremendous and so prolonged 
was the roar that Grant at headquarters imagined Wadsworth to be 
in a contest with a forest full of Confederates, handsomely cleaning 
them out and making connection with Hancock on tlie Plank Road. 
At the bivouac fire he and Rawlins were full of rejoicing at Wads- 
worth's success and left unsaid no word of praise for his promptness, 
courage and patriotism. E. B. Washburne, member of Congress 
from Illinois, who was Grant's friend, and accompanying the army, 
could add much concerning what he had known of Wadsworth in 
Washington. 

The reality of this " success ", however, was ironically different 
and was for Wadsworth the final stroke in the day's disasters. The 

105 



3ame6 Samuel *WIla&0wortb 

commander of the brigade already mentioned, with hilariousness well 
stimulated, continued to make the forest ring with his discharges, 
and when AVadsworth sent an aide to bid him cease firing and keep 
quiet, ordered cheers for his native State. A second order to report 
at once to Wadsworth he refused to obey. The next morning he had 
disappeared altogether; his service to the Union cause was at an end. 

As long as there was a glinmier of light Wadsworth's line ad- 
vanced, pushing Wilcox's skirmishers back toward the Plank Road. 
AAHien the division finally came to a halt the line was about half or 
three-quarters of a mile from the road and nearly parallel to it. It 
had, however, moved more to the left than was at first intended, the 
magnet of Hill's and Hancock's contest proving an irresistible at- 
traction. The right of the line was thus not far from the northeast 
corner of the Widow Tapp's clearing, on the western edge of which 
were Lee's and Hill's headquarters; the left was in the thick woods 
towards Hancock's line, but not connecting with it. Though as yet 
Wadsworth had brought no aid to Hancock, and though, bj' reason 
of his boisterous advance, a surprise was now out of the question, 
yet he was in position to take part at once in the hard fighting which 
was sure to begin early the next day. Late at night, when the regi- 
ments had all reported, he sent an aide. Captain Monteith, back to 
Warren to get the next day's orders and also to bring up a supply 
of amnmnition, much needed after the recent expenditure. 

The many records that have been made of the hours passed in 
this nightmare of a place show how completely the mystery of the 
forest had penetrated the living beings who had invaded its depths, 
working upon them in darkness even more compellingly than in 
daylight. That portion of Wadsworth's command near the Tapp 
field was so close to the enemy that men venturing out from either 
side in search of water found themselves caught within the lines of 
their opponents. Now and then a soldier, as merciful as he was 
daring, crept out to give a drink from his canteen to a wounded 
enemy whose cries mingled with the calls of the whippoorwills. Near 
where the men of the Sixth Wisconsin lay on their arms a dying 

106 



3ames Samuel TSUa^swortb 

Confederate soldier moaned repeatedly: " My God! why hast thou 
forsaken me { " 

The fortunes of the battle about to be renewed were dependent 
for both sides on the arrival of reinforcements. Burnside's Corps, 
of approximately 17,000 men, which was due to be on hand early hi 
the morning, was to attack Hill on the left flank and rear in the 
Chewning fields, the high open ground from which Crawford had 
been withdrawn the morning before. This attack, if successful, would 
cut off Ewell from Hill. But Burnside had, as Lyman said of him, 
a "genms of slowness;" while on the Confederate side, where the 
need was far more exigent, the hope of help lay in Longstreet, Lee's 
strength and reliance. In the conflict of the afternoon of May 5 — 
" a butchery pure and simple . . . unrelieved by any of the arts 
of war in which the exercise of military skill and tact robs the hour 
of some of its horrors " — Hill's two Divisions, amounting to 15,000 
men, had been terribly weakened, and when night brought the contest 
to an end he allowed his battered brigades to stay where darkness 
found them, their intrenchments not continuous and their lines un- 
rectified. Thus insecure and anxious, he and Lee at their head- 
quarters in the Tapp field prayed that da^vn might not come before 
they should be reinforced. Longstreet, in truth, with his 10,000 
men, was not failing them. Having rested his troops after a march 
of twenty-three miles, he had started half an hour after midnight to 
complete the remaining ten or eleven miles to the battlefield; Ander- 
son's Division of Hill's Corps, 7,000 by count, had about the same 
distance left to accomplish on the Plank Road. 

At three o'clock Captain Monteith returned to Wadsworth, bring- 
ing the supply of ammunition and the orders from Warren, which 
were to attack at five o'clock simultaneously with Hancock: " Set 
your line of battle on a line northeast and southwest, and march 
directly southeast on the flank of the enemy in front of General 
Hancock." Before the ammunition could be distributed, dawn had 
already come. It was Friday, May 6, the most critical day in the 



107 



3ame0 Samuel Tttllabswortb 

history of the Republic, and for Wadsworth the last day of conscious 
life. 

At the earliest gleam of light the men were roused, and then 
having snatched a cold bite and formed in silence, they waited the 
sound of the signal gun from Hancock's headquarters at the cross- 
roads. When its boom broke the stillness they pushed resolutely 
through the thickets and swamps. As they drew near the Plank Road 
the left naturally swung round so as to advance in line with Getty's 
and Birney's divisions which were coming from the Brock Road. 
The two bodies thus meeting became somewhat crowded together, 
but lost none of their energy. They quickly brushed the Confeder- 
ates out of their irregular breastworks and drove them down the 
road and through the forest toward and into the Tapp field, capturing 
many prisoners. Hancock, at the cross-roads, as he received one mes- 
sage after another of success, was radiant. " Tell General Meade," 
he cried to Lyman, " we are driving them most beautifully. Birney 
has gone in and is cleaning them out beautifully." Well might he 
seize this chance to rejoice; it proved the one instant of triumph in 
all that fatal day. 

For the Confederates the situation was desperate. If they could 
not maintain themselves in the clearing, their chance of dividing 
Grant's army was gone once for all. In the life of Lee it was one 
of those supreme moments when the soldier's being, with a degree 
of power rarely attained, must seek to infuse its will into thousands 
of men whose wills have gone nerveless at the bidding of mob terror 
and despair. That force of his must flow everywhere, imparting the 
cheer and certainty of present help — for Longstreet's two divisions, 
commanded by Field and Kershaw, were advancing in parallel 
columns along the Plank Road at as near a double-quick as the 
weary men could attain. And so the gray-haired general, mounted 
on Traveller, a figure hardly less historic than Lee himself, radiating 
ardor of battle in the moment of defeat, seems, in the picture that one 
forms of that forlorn field with its small huddle of shanties and its 

108 



Sames Samuel ^at)6\x)ortb 

withered fruit trees, to be indeed omnipresent. But in this crisis 
the suiimions of Lee, at otlier times all-compelling in its inspiration, 
proved of little avail. On the southern edge of the field Uirney's 
left had advanced so far that its fire came in the rear of the Con- 
federate batteries, the guns of which now brought no sense of strength 
to the dispirited masses of men in gray who, as one brigade after 
another had been rolled up, refused to rally and did not stop even 
when they reached the shelter of the woods. " ]My God! General 
INIcGowan," exclaimed Lee, " is this sjilendid brigade of yours running 
like a flock of geese? " 

By six o'clock the head of Longstreet's colmiin had just reached 
the field. His first brigade got into position just in time to arrest 
the career of Birney's troops, and when Gregg's Texas Brigade, the 
fourth to arrive, came up and formed behind the guns, its duty was 
to assail the woods north of the Plank Road, where Wadsworth's men 
had been momentarily checked by the artillery. Lee, the need of 
success his one thought, rode along-side the Texans as they were 
about to start, and declared that he himself would lead them. To 
their cries of " Go back, General Lee, go back," and " We won't go 
on unless j'ou go back," he paid no heed, till a man stepped from the 
ranks and, seizing Traveller's bridle turned the horse about. " The 
fine eye of Lee," says one of the many Confederate accounts of this 
stirring incident, " must often have glistened with something better 
than a conqueror's pride whenever he recalled the cry with which 
that veteran rank and file sent him to the rear and themselves to the 
front." 

It was a brigade thus sped to the charge that Wadsworth and his 
men, themselves in far from good order, were destined to meet. The 
wide wheel that they had made to advance westward, the intermingling 
with the troops of Hancock's Corps, and finally the struggle through 
the morass which lay across their path had cut up their formation 
into small separate masses; but their ardor was undiminished. For 
all their disorder they had caught a vision of victory such as the 
Army of the Potomac had not known for many a long month. The 

109 



3ame0 Samuel TIlaa^swo^tb 

shock when their first line met the Texans was appaUing. " The 
Federals," writes the Confederate general, E. ]M. Law, " were advanc- 
ing through the pines with ajiparently resistless force, when Gregg's 
eight hundred Texans, regardless of numbers, flanks, or supports 
dashed directly ujjon them. There was a terrific crash, mingled with 
wild yells, which settled down into a steady roar of musketry. 
In less than ten minutes one-half of that devoted eight hundred were 
lying ujjon the field, dead or wounded; but they had delivered a 
staggering blow and broken the force of the Federal advance." 

Wadsworth, who was on the Plank Road, had his horse shot under 
him; the division, sheltered in the woods, stood firm. The charge of 
another brigade, Benning's Georgians, no less furious than that of 
the Texans, it repulsed, also, inflicting hardly less damage; but the 
third assault, made by Law's brigade, it could not withstand. The 
fierceness of this contest is vividly portrayed in the narrative of 
Sergeant Frey, of the One Hundred and Fiftieth Pennsylvania of 
Stone's Brigade. Though it has the conventional characteristics of 
" battle pieces " in regimental histories, the note of admiration for 
Wadsworth's courage and kindliness gives it individuality and point. 

" Now is our turn. As the men composing om- first and second 
lines take refuge in our rear, we move to the front, and General Wads- 
worth riding up to our regiment says : ' Give it to them, Bucktails ! ' 
We pour in one close, deadly volley, and they stagger under the 
terrible fire. The general shouts: 'Boys, you are driving them; 
charge! ' Our brigade, now the front, charges fiercely, driving them 
back some distance; but a fresh line comes to their support, fires a 
volley in our very faces and sends us back over the ground we had 
just gained, charging us in return. A new line comes to our aid, 
pours its fire upon the opposing ranks, compelling them to give way : 
and again we charge over the same gromid, only to be driven back in 
turn on our reserves, as reinforcements come to the help of the enemy. 
The battle now l^ecomes close and bloody. Charges and counter- 
charges are made in quick succession. Five times we traverse the 
same ground, led by General Wadsworth who sits on his horse with 
no 



3ames Samuel iWIlat»0wortb 

hat in hand, bringing it down on the pommel of his saddle with every 
bound as he rides at the head of the column. Then as the Ijullets 
strike among his men like hail and they l^egin to recoil, he rides slowly 
back in their midst, speaking kindly to them, with ever a smile on his 
pleasant countenance which shows no concern for the storm of lead 
and iron raging around him." 

" Wadsworth has been slowly pushed back," reported Captain 
Cope of Warren's staff at 7.40, " but is contesting every inch of 
ground." At length, however, the Confederate advance against 
Birney south of the Plank Road prospered; the force opposed to 
Wadsworth succeeded in jjushing his regiments farther and farther 
into the deep woods and across the swamjiy ground over which they 
had so recently won their way. Retreating under these circumstances, 
the division lost all coherence and for a time was scattered in frag- 
ments through the forest. Fortunately, however, the Confederates 
could not inmiediately follow up their advantage, and Wadsworth, 
with the aid of General Rice and of Rogers and Montieth of his own 
staff, succeeded in bringing his force into some sort of order. 

The position of the Union troops after Longstreet's attack, though 
difficult to ascertain with exactness, is perhaj)s best set forth by 
Atkinson. " Getty had been crowded, during the first advance, to 
the south side of the road, and all troops that had been engaged were 
being rallied and reformed in close order, so that a gap had ojiened 
immediately on the right of the Plank Road l)etween the troops that 
had been fighting under Birney against Kershaw and those that had 
engaged Field's Division near Tajip's along with the Fifth Corps 
under AVadsworth." Into this gap at about seven o'clock advanced 
the brigade of Brigadier-General Alexander S. Webb, the l)ody that 
at Gettysburg had borne the brunt of Pickett's charge. Ordered by 
Birney to deploy on the Plank Road and to go forward to replace 
Getty, Webb suddenly met the enemy. An ai^palling crash marked 
the beginning of the encounter, and the jirolonged and heavy firing 
indicated the severity of the struggle. 

Ill 



3ame0 Samuel ^at)swortb 

Following up this attack, the enemy assailed Wadsworth's right, 
where Cutler was. So violent was the onset that Cutler was driven 
back in the direction of the Wilderness clearing, from which he had 
come the night before, and completely separated from the rest of the 
division. The irruption of some twelve hundred of his men from 
the woods into the open space, together with his report of the death 
of Wadsworth, heavy losses, and the close aijproach of the Confederate 
skirmishers, spread alarm at the army headquarters; Grant rode off 
in haste to consult with Hancock while the batteries on the high 
ground of the clearing stood ready to open on the enemy supposed to 
be pursuing Cutler. 

During the course of the attack in which Webb and Cutler re- 
ceived such severe handling, an aide brought to Wadsworth a message 
summoning him to Hancock's headquarters; arrived there, he was 
informed of Meade's despatch placing him under Hancock's orders 
and of the movement of Burnside by way of Chewning's toward 
Parker's Store. Hancock now gave Wadsworth Ward's and Webb's 
brigades of his own corps and a brigade (Carruth's) belonging to one 
of Burnside's divisions which was coming to Hancock's assistance 
along the Brock Road; with these and the remnants of his own 
brigades, Wadsworth was to push forward on the right of the Plank 
Road, driving off the enemj' in front of Webb and, if possible, reaching 
out a hand to Burnside's Division at Chewning's." 

Thus authorized and inspired by Hancock — " bully Hancock," 
as Meade delighted to call him — Wadsworth returned to his com- 
mand, pressing through the crowd of wounded men whose blood was 
staining the red soil of the roadway. At the front, in spite of the 
firing, matters were at a standstill. IVIost of the regiments of Webb's 
Brigade were screened by a dense thicket of saplings; at the road he 
had stationed the Twentieth Massachusetts, a small but gallant regi- 
ment with a gallant commander. Major Henrj' L. Abbott, ordering 
him to hold it at all costs. Opposite them, across a slight depression 
in the road which was continued on the right by the space of swampy 
ground already mentioned, lay the enemy, protected in their turn 
n2 




GULP'S HILL, GETTYSBURG 
Entrenchments of Wadsworth's Division, July 2-3, 1863 



3ame6 Samuel Wlat)swortb 

by thickets and, at the road, by a row of logs. The distance between 
the two lines was not more than twenty or thirty yards. Farther 
to the right, Webb's line was considerably bent back. On such ground, 
as Wadsworth had already learned from the events of the early 
morning, no movement of a considerable body of troops could be 
successfully conducted against a force so resolute and elated as was 
now there to meet them; the only hope was to charge down the road, 
where the open space enabled a command to see and to follow its 
leader, in the hope, after repeated trials, of breaking the enemy's 
line. The hope was a forlorn one, but, in view of the peril of further 
Confederate success, what the occasion required was not skill but 
naked courage ; Wadsworth, in following his instinct to lead in person, 
did the thing that was right and necessary. " In the two days of 
desperate fighting that followed our crossing the Rapidan," ^VTote 
Humphreys of him, " he was conspicuous beyond all others for his 
gallantry, prompter than all others in leading his troops again and 
again into action. In all these combats he literally led his men, who, 
inspired by his heroic bearing, continually renewed the contest, which 
but for him they would have yielded." 

Thus it was that, riding forward and coming upon the Twentieth 
Massachusetts, Wadsworth called out to Abbott, " Cannot you do 
something here? " ^Vhen Abbott showed hesitation in leaving the post 
to which Webb had assigned him, Wadsworth leaped his horse over 
the slight barrier of logs behind which the men were lying and of 
course Abbott and his men followed. The terrific fire which instantly 
assailed them it was impossible to stand against, and the attempt had 
to be abandoned. Abbott ordered the men to lie down, while he 
walked back and forth before the line. It was not long before he 
fell, mortally wounded. As for Wadsworth, though his horse was 
killed — the second he lost that morning — he himself was unhurt. 

Presently, when Carruth's Brigade came up to his support, a 
brand-new regiment commanded by that brilliant young soldier, 
Frank Bartlett, made another attempt to break the Confederate line. 

113 



3amcs Samuel XRIlabswortb 

The image of Wadsworth stamped upon these men of the Fifty- 
seventh, now coming under fire for the first time, shows how that 
power of leadership which he had been a whole lifetime in building 
up, was, at this supreme moment of his life, the very elemental force 
of his being. It prevailed, " even to drawing men around him who 
had never seen or scarcely heard of him before, holding them almost 
in the jaws of death and impressing them with his own loftj' spirit of 
loyalty which rose above all fear of danger." With such inspiration 
the men pressed forward to the attack and lost two hundred and 
fifty-two men in killed and wounded, but the Confederate line proved 
unyielding and the assailants were forced to fall back. Not long 
afterward an order came from Hancock to desist from further at- 
tacks. Word had reached him that Longstreet was not in his front 
but was threatening his extreme left, and on account of this report, 
mistaken as it was soon disastrously proved to be, troops were with- 
drawn from the Plank Road and hurried thither. 

For Wadsworth and his hard-fought men the resjDite was wel- 
come. Of the five thousand with whom he had set out on the preceding 
afternoon, less than two thousand remained, and he himself was ex- 
hausted. For the last three nights he had had little or no sleep, and 
for two days his sustenance had been coffee, hard bread, and pork. 
Since his snatch of breakfast at daylight he had been through five 
hours of the most frightfully severe work that man is ever called upon 
to do. To Monteith, who was alone with him for a time, he confessed 
that he was so utterly worn out as to be unfit to conmiand. Indeed, he 
" felt that he ought in justice to himself and his men to turn the 
command over to General Cutler." But Cutler and his brigade were 
far beyond reach. Before long Wadsworth's orderly appeared and 
furnished him something to eat, which he shared with his aides. Dur- 
ing the lull, too, his heart was gladdened by the sight of Craig, who 
had obtained permission to come over from Chancellorsville, where 
Tobert's Cavalry was guarding the trains, to staj' with his father for 
an hour or so. Seeing the General's fatigue and shocked to learn of 



3ames Samuel Tailab6\x)ortb 

the way in which he had been exposing his life, Craig pleaded with 
him to be less reckless. Wadsworth's only answer, saj's Rogers, was 
to use his soldier's authority and to order Craig back to Torbert's 
command. Ill at ease, the son departed, and the father turned to his 
duty and his fate. 

The morning was hot and still, the woods were thick with low- 
hanging smoke, here and there fires smouldered in the underbrush. 
The continued quiet of the enemy was ominous. It must mean that 
the storm was about to break. But where? Wadsworth despatched 
Monteith to caution his right, still unprotected, for Burnside was no- 
where near connecting with it, and sent orders to the commanders 
along the line to fight hard and hold their ground. The master-stroke 
of the great battle — the counterpart of " Stonewall " Jackson's sur- 
prise flank attack through the woods at Chancellorsville — was about 
to be dealt. 

AH that Wadsworth ever knew of the catastrophe is soon told. 
Suddenly, at a little distance at his left and extending well to his 
rear, the last quarter from which attack might be expected, came the 
sound of the Rebel " yai-yai-yai-yai," followed by sharp volleys in 
rapid succession. He sprang to his horse; every one about him was 
alert to meet the crisis. Near at hand he found General Webb and 
sent him across the road to look out for the regiments there. Then 
he seized upon the Thirty-seventh JNIassachusetts, of Eustis's Brigade, 
which was coming from the direction of the cross-roads, and ordered 
it forward along the road to stay the advance of the enemy from 
that quarter. Thus he hoped to check the Confederate approach 
sufficiently for him to wheel his own line around so that it should be 
parallel to the road and in position to stop the flank attack. 

Making a sweep with his arm from right to left to indicate to his 
regiments a left half-wheel, he himself went on to charge with the 
Thirty-seventh, which under its resolute commander. Colonel Oliver 
Edwards, broke the enemy's first line and struck its second. Wads- 
worth, seeing the deadly fire with which the regiment was encompassed 
on tliree sides, ordered Edwards to face his men by the rear rank 

115 



3amcs Samuel IKHabgwortb 

and fight his way back, saying, " You have done all I expected a 
brigade to do." Then he dashed back to his own line to get into 
position while there was yet time, for the broken squads of men emerg- 
ing from the woods on the south side of the road and streaming to the 
rear and the renewing tumult of musketry showed that the storm 
of war from that direction was driving swiftly toward him. Indeed, 
the two clouds, meeting, were to burst directly upon Wadsworth and 
his command. Nearer and nearer they came, as inexorable in their 
steady approach as if they were a force of nature. In the face of 
disaster thus closing in, every second was an agony, a struggle like 
that of a man trying to stay single-handed the doom of flood or fire. 

Suddenly, as Wadsworth was helping to wheel his fragmentary 
line round to the road, a crash came right athwart its path. Perrin's 
Alabama Brigade, which had been lying on the ground, seeing the 
opportunity of assailing his flank, had risen and discharged a volley 
at close quarters. The Pennsylvania troops which on Seminary Ridge 
at Gettysburg had resisted the enemy so long and valiantly before 
yielding now broke at the first fire and fled in confusion. Wadsworth's 
horse, however, kept on, and it was not till he was within twenty or 
thirty feet of his opponents that he could control it. Then, as he 
turned to follow his men, he was struck by a shot in the back of the 
head. Rogers, riding by his side was spattered with his blood. Wads- 
worth fell, and the enemy pressed on in triumph over his unconscious 
body. 

To Wadsworth, left dying in the hands of the enemy — a fate the 
thought of which rarely failed to touch a soldier with dread — was 
granted one more opportunity of serving his country, for the im- 
pression made upon those who came into the silent presence of this 
Northern gentleman, found mortally wounded where the battle had 
raged fiercest, was profound and lasting. 

The Confederates remained in possession of the ground where he 
fell, and soon, after the fashion of war when the battle line has swept 
onward, his sword, watch, field-glasses, and map were taken from him, 
the two latter coming into the possession of Lieutenant Colonel Sorrel, 

116 





00 



> 
< 



a 

UJ 

a 

z 

o 
5 



o 

CO 

< 
5 



O 
$ 

(O 
< 

< 

cc 
u 

z 

UJ 

o 
u 
cc 
liJ 

I 

h- 

z 
o 

Q. 

cr 

< 



en 

CO 

u 

z 

IT 
UJ 

a 

z 

UJ 

Z 

> 
< 

CC 



Sames Samuel ^at)swortb 

Longstreet's brilliant young staff-officer, who had conducted the flank 
movement through the woods. Presently, Colonel Charles ^Marshall, 
a Baltimorean on Lee's staff, being sent into the woods on the right 
of the road with an order concerning the advance that Lee was 
preparing to make, heard that a Federal general officer was lying 
mortally wounded not far away. " I proceeded to the spot," he wrote 
later, " and found General Wadsworth, whom I knew by a piece of 
paper which was pinned to his coat with his name on it . . .1 
found him lying on his back, his head supported by something which 
I do not now remember, and over him was extended a shelter tent, 
about three feet from the ground, the two corners at his head being 
attached to boughs of trees, I think, the other two and the sides being 
sujjjjorted by muskets. His appearance was perfectly natural, and 
his left hand grasped the stock of one of the supporting muskets near 
the guard. His fingers played with the trigger, and occasionally he 
would push the piece from him as far as he could reach, still grasping 
it in his hand. Supposing that he might wish to send some message 
to his family, I addressed him and tendered my services. I found, 
however, that he paid no attention to me, and upon further effort 
to communicate with him discovered that he was unconscious of what 
was passing around him. I should not have supposed that such was 
the case from the expression of his face, which was perfectly calm 
and natural, the eye indicating consciousness and intelligence." 

Dui'ing the afternoon Wadsworth was taken to one of the Con- 
federate field hospitals on the Plank Road, a few miles in the rear 
of the lines. Here, after the surgeons had examined the wound and 
found it to be fatal, it was his fortune to be watched over by a wounded 
LTnion officer, Captain Z. Boylston Adams, of the Fifty-sixth 3Ias- 
sachusetts of Carruth's Brigade. Captured in the woods not far from 
where Wadsworth fell, Adams had been taken to the same Confed- 
erate hospital, and on the next morning had been chloroformed and 
operated on for a broken leg. Adams, himself a young surgeon, in 
the story he told of his watch over the dying soldier, reveals how 

117 



3ames Samuel Mabewortb 

strangely mingled are tenderness and brutality in that scourge of 
civilization which we call war. 

" AVlien I recovered consciousness I found myself lying on the 
ground beneath a tent fly, and at my side a stretcher on which lay 
the form of a Union general officer, as shown by his shoulder star. 
His face was familiar. Raising myself upon my elbow I spoke to 
him, but he made no reply. I looked closely at him and recognized 
the man who rode up to us on the Plank Road the day before, when 
my brigade was put in to the battle as already described. He was 
rather tall, an eminently handsome man of conmianding presence, 
but showing gentle breeding. I lifted his eyelids, but there was 
no speculation in those eyes. I felt his pulse, which was going regu- 
larly. His breathing was a little labored. There was no expression 
of pain, but occasionally a deep sigh. His noble features were calm 
and natm-al, except that his mouth was drawn down at the left side. 
His right arm was evidently paralyzed, which indicated that the injury 
was to the left brain. Examining further, I found that a musket ball 
had entered the top of his head a little to the left of the median line. 
In his left hand, which lay quietly upon the breast of his buttoned 
coat, he held a scrap of paper on which was written, ' General James 
S. Wadsworth.' 

" Meanwhile the rebel officers thronged the little fly and crowded 
around, curious to see the dying man whose name and fame had 
reached their ears. Numberless questions were put to me. 

" ' Do you mean to say that this is James S. Wadsworth, of New 
York, the proprietor of vast estates in the Genesee Valley, the candi- 
date for governor in 1862? ' etc. 

" I remarked one very singular fact. He lay apparently totally 
unconscious, but whenever, as was not infrequent, some of the curious 
ones took the paper to read the name upon it, he would frown and 
show restlessness, and his hand moved to and fro as if in search of 
something, until the paper was put into the flngers, when he would 
grasp it and lay his hand quietly upon his breast. I frequently heard 
the rebels say, ' I'd never believe that they had such men as that in 

118 



3ame0 Samuel lKIla^0wortb 

their army.' Late in the afternoon a party came in with one vain 
young fellow much bedizened with stars and buttons and gold lace, 
and clearly under the influence of liquor. Unmindful of the impress 
of dignity and nobility of character upon the features of the dying 
man, he swore at me and called me a liar for saying that this was 
James S. Wadsworth, declaring that he knew that our officers were 
crazy abolitionists, mercenaries, low politicians, hirelings from foreign 
armies, etc." . . . 

" The surgeons came Saturday night and examined General 
Wadsworth's wound, removing a piece of the skull and then probing 
for the ball (the latter struck me as bad surgery). One remarkable 
thing about the case was that the ball had entered near the top of 
the head, had gone forward, and was lodged in the anterior lobe of 
the left side of the brain. Occasionally he heaved a deep sigh, but 
otherwise lay in calm slumber. 

" Still another man was near Wadsworth in these last hours giv- 
ing his care not merely from the instinct to serve the dj'ing which 
humanizes all of us, but also from a deep sense of personal gratitude. 

"After dark (continues Adams) on the evening of the 7th of 
May (the day after the battle) a Virginian, not a soldier, came up 
to the back of the fly and asked me about the dying general. ' Was 
it really General Wadsworth? ' etc. He said ' My name is Patrick 
McCracken and I have a little farm a few miles out. I have heard 
that General Wadsworth is here wounded, and I want to do something 
for him.' He then related how the general had saved him from long 
imprisonment at the time Wadsworth was in command of the city 
of Washington. He, McCracken, was arrested and confined in the 
Old Capitol Prison as a rebel spy and had been released by the gen- 
eral's order on the representation that his family in the Wilderness 
neighborhood were suffering from his absence, and on the promise 
that if allowed to go home, he would not assist in any way the cause 
of the Confederacy. This promise he assured me he had kept, but 
added that he was now under suspicion and was obliged so to act 

119 



3ames Samuel Ma^swortb 

as not to lead the rebel soldiers to suspect that he was bringing com- 
forts to the Federal wounded. That he came, therefore, only to bring 
things for the rebel wounded, but if I would take some milk or any- 
thing he could supply, and give it to the general, he would be happy. 

During the night Lee's troops were in motion, and on Sunday 
morning. May 8, the distant sound of cannon from the direction of 
Spotsylvania Court House signified the renewal of the struggle be- 
tween him and Grant. Among the hospital tents the surgeons were 
still busy, and Adams lying by Wadsworth's side, awaited the arrival 
of the faithful Virginian. "When McCracken came with fresh milk, 
he and one of the surgeons made a vain effort to give nourishment to 
the dying man. By noon the end was plainly near, and the young 
northern physician, familiar with death as he was, watched, deeply 
moved, until the last breath was drawn. 

McCracken, returning in the afternoon, asked permission to take 
the body and place it in his family burying ground. He was allowed 
his way, and, having accomplished the task with all the care permitted 
by the means at his disposal, made it his next duty to write to Mrs. 
Wadsworth a simple account of his offices for the dead. INIontgomery 
Ritchie went at once to Fredericksburg, whither, through the co-opera- 
tion of Union and Confederate authorities under a flag of truce, the 
body was brought on May 17. From there it was taken to Geneseo, 
with due honors from the National and the State governments, and 
finally it was laid to rest in the burying-ground on the hill. 

The shock of loss woke the nation to the wealth of service that had 
been devoted to it by one man. Single deeds of AVadsworth's which 
it had accepted with matter-of-course praise were now seen to make 
up a consecrated whole. Grant, Meade, Humjihreys, and Hancock 
testified in no equivocal terms to the example and inspiration of his 
leadership; friends made in Washington and New York through 
participation in public aff'airs were no whit behind the army; the 
farmers of Geneseo, with whose lives he had been knit for more than 
half a century, knew that they had lost a friend whose career had 

120 



3ame0 Samuel TKHa^swortb 

been their welfare. But his distinctive service was what the Confed- 
erate officers who came to gaze in wonder at the dying man had 
grudgingly admitted, and what John Lothrop Motley proclaimed in 
his own ringing fashion: " "\Mien foreign calumniators and domestic 
traitors spoke of Southern chivalrj' and of Northern mercenaries, the 
single name of Wadsworth was answer enough to all their vulgar 
babble." Lying dormant within the soul of a man whose life showed 
to the world as that of an earnest and friendly countrj' gentleman, 
and whose years, if nothing else, might be deemed sufficient to exempt 
him from service in the field, dwelt forces that at the call of national 
danger were to make of him a soldier and a hero. To this end had 
been passed those many years of hapjjy and wholesome activity in 
Geneseo; it was in truth their consummation when, amid the smoke- 
filled thickets of the Wilderness, his spirit fired by the desperateness of 
the need, he led his men in charge after charge. All this Wadsworth, 
by his heroic death, brought home to every heart. And, recognizing 
how rare and precious was the sacrifice thus laid upon the altar, the 
nation mingled gratitude with its grief and renewed its vow that such 
a life should not have been given in vain. 



121 



•js »>.».*.'.'■ •«•.'.'.%'.■.•*■'«' '.'.-;•.%• •:«>'•.«.•,'.%', 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
! inn Mil nil' mil i»r '■■'•■.: ..,. 1,1 „...„, 




,»,S',-»-.;l%^ 



%',v,:.-.:i «.«. 



;;::S«:s::; 



^^iv^^^^i,.,.,., , . .., , 



<<Mu nil Mill ii 

013 700 552 9 9 



v^^/ys^ 



mmm 



mmm 






'.v,',:\',\'r,yy 



■ till < 1 ' 



